Protip for our local if you're going to drug your wife and invite the whole village to run a train on her, don't save all the evidence in `abuses.zip`

!moidmoment er, moidalmost-a-decade

A husband who allegedly drugged his wife and invited more than 80 strangers to r*pe her at their home for almost a decade went on trial on Monday in a case that has shocked France.

Fifty men accused of taking part in the abuse of the woman are also on trial at the court in Avignon. More than a dozen feminists dressed in black protested outside the courthouse as the trial opened.

Police say Dominique Pélicot crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication and mixed it into his wife Gisèle's evening meal or in her wine at their home in Mazan, near Carpentras in Provence. The father of three recruited men to r*pe and sexually abuse her from a online chatroom, where members fantasised about performing sexual acts on non-consenting partners.

The presiding judge, Roger Arata, announced that all hearings would be public, granting Gisèle Pélicot her wish for "complete publicity until the end" of the court case, according to one of her lawyers, Stéphane Babonneau.

The trial would nonetheless be "a horrible ordeal" for her, said another of her lawyers, Antoine Camus.

"For the first time, she will have to live through the r*pes that she endured over 10 years," he told Agence France-Presse, adding that his client had "no recollection" of the abuse that she discovered only in 2020.

Gisèle Pélicot, who arrived at the court supported by her three children, did not want a trial behind closed doors because "that's what her attackers would have wanted", Camus said.

>did not want a trial behind closed doors because "that's what her attackers would have wanted"