When the main suspect becomes the police’s best “ally”: without him Dominic P., who meticulously archived the thousands of photos and videos of his wife being raped by men he recruited online, the perpetrators would probably never have been found.

After a search that lasted more than two years, the police managed to identify 54 men, out of the 72 they were looking for.

But in the meantime, one of them died and two others were acquitted due to lack of sufficient evidence.

A total of 51 defendants, including the 71-year-old husband of Giselle P., are on trial from Monday in Avignon for the rapes they committed between 2011-20, in the couple’s home in Paris and in the village of Mazan.

The trial is expected to last until December 20.

If convicted, the defendants face up to 20 years in prison.

The police counted about 200 rapes against Giselle P., now 72 years old.

Most of them were committed by her husband, the remaining 92 men completely unknown to her.

What needed to be done was to identify these men, for the authorities to understand the story behind the chronic sexual abuse of the woman, and for each suspect to be charged.

To do this “eI chose to form a limited group of four people“, police inspector Jeremy Boss Plattier explained from the witness stand. “And I chose people strong enough to face the images,” he commented, detailing the long, painstaking investigations.

Unwittingly, Dominic P. facilitated the investigation: he had stored on their computer’s hard drive thousands of photos and videos he had taken. All the material also carried detailed descriptions: in a folder titled ‘abuse’ he had recorded the name, age and even the telephone number of every man who went to the house to rape the unconscious Giselle.

The cops now had to find “Chris the fireman”, “Quentin”, “Gaston”, “David the Black” or even “Zanlykasiat”.

At the same time, the team followed the many traces left by the perpetrators in their telephone conversations with the husband.

The communication started online on the dating site Coco.fr, then moved to a “private” chat room that was closed last June by court order because it had turned into a “predator’s den.”

Finally, the husband communicated with the would-be rapists via Skype or on the phone.

The police compiled an initial list of 11 “contacts” of Dominic P. and looked up their email addresses, with the help of Microsoft.

They did the same with the phones: from the phone numbers (on the husband’s accounts) they looked to see if there was any connection between the call and the events recorded on nearby dates in the videos, explained Boss Plattier.

Dominic P. had also blocked many contacts on his phone, which raised the suspicions of the police.

“It is unusual, we saw a very large number of blocked contacts and thought that some of these people would be relatedn” with the rapes, the police officer continued.

To find the details of these men, the police asked for the help of the telephone companies.

Another method used was the identification of persons through the software available to the French police, by inserting into it images found on the husband’s computer.

Due to the large number of suspects, the arrests were made in five phasesfrom the end of 2020, until September 2021.

Each time, before the rapes, the officers found that it was developing the same scenario: the man who had been invited to the house had to park his car at a sufficient distance, so as not to arouse the suspicions of the neighbors. Some waited up to an hour, until their victim was sedated.

In no way had they previously had any contact with her, the police officer stressed, dismissing claims by some who say they were involved in a “fantasy” between the pair.

Giselle P. was unconscious and “did not make any movement” in the thousands of images found in her husband’s possession, Boss Plattier emphasized.

“I don’t remember him saying a single word, sometimes there are muffled, snoring sounds, but no intelligible words,” concluded the police officer.