French woman says uncovering of mass rape trauma 'saved her life'
A French woman whose husband is accused of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged told his trial on Thursday that police had saved her by uncovering the crimes.
"The police saved my life by investigating Mister P.'s computer", Gisele P. told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband – one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial.
Gisele P., now 71, had remained stoic and silent through the three first days of the high-profile case, communicating only through her lawyers.
But she revealed her emotion on the stand on Thursday when she recounted the moment in November 2020 when investigators first showed her the images of a decade of sexual abuse orchestrated and filmed by her husband Dominique P.
"My world is falling apart. For me, everything is falling apart. Everything I have built up over 50 years," Gisele P. said.
"Frankly, these are scenes of horror for me," she said of the pictures, while her husband listened with his head bowed.
"I'm lying motionless on the bed, being raped," added the woman of the "barbaric" footage.
"They treat me like a rag doll," she told a panel of five judges, adding that she had only plucked up the courage to watch the footage in May 2024.
"Don't talk to me about sex scenes. These are rape scenes," she said, stressing that she had never practised swinging or any other form of libertine sex.
Lawyers for some of the defendants questioned on Wednesday whether the couple had had a libertine relationship, or whether it was credible that Gisele P. had noticed nothing for the entire decade of the abuse.
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