“My world collapsed,” said the 72-year-old Giselle Pelicotestifying at the court of Avignon, for the case of multiples rapes of her while drugged by her husband.

The police “saved my life,” she said, recounting the moment in November 2020 when investigators first showed her the images of the victim being sexually assaulted. She drugged by her husband of 50 years filming the rapists he had invited online.

“Inside I am a ruin. It may not be visible from my face but from behind…”, he confessed before the court.

Giselle Pelicot, at the age of 71, refused the anonymity offered to her by the French justice and demanded “that everything be made public so that the shame changes sides”.

The trial began on Monday with the main accused being the “mastermind” of the crime, the victim’s husband of 50 years, Dominic Peliko. 51 out of a total of 72 rapists are in the defendant’s dock.

The horror allegedly, according to investigators, began in 2011, and continued for a decade.

“The rapists obeyed the husband’s rules”

Men invited to the couple’s home in Provence “couldn’t speak loudly, had to take off their clothes in the kitchen, couldn’t wear perfume or smell smoke,” French media reported.

Sometimes they had to wait up to an hour and a half in a nearby parking lot for the hypnotic to take full effect and which the husband used to kill his wife before the rapes,

Peliko videotaped the alleged rapes, so the police were able to locate – over two years – the majority of the 72 suspects aged 22 to 70 they were looking for.

4 years ago, Dominic Pelico was arrested by police in a supermarket filming up women’s skirts. Upon further investigation, they discovered thousands of photos and videos depicting his wife, drugged and unconscious, being raped by strangers.

The trial began on Monday in the southern city of Avignon and is expected to last until December.

What do the 51 defendants say?

The 51 accused men for their part invoke various justifications for the case. Some claim they thought they had the husband’s consent and therefore did not believe they were committing rape, while others claim they believed the woman had consented to her drugging as part of a sexual fantasy. However, the woman had no memory of the rapes and will see the footage of the attacks for the first time in court.

The accused rapists are between 26 and 72 years old. Some are single, some are married or separated, and some are family men.

Their defense says they were just helping a liberal couple live out their fantasies, and their lawyers claim the defendants were led into a trap and didn’t know Giselle wasn’t willing to participate.

But Pelicott told investigators they all knew Gisele was unknowingly drugged before they proceeded to rape her.

He also told prosecutors that only three men left the house quickly after arriving, while all the others continued the abuse, with some returning to rape her up to six times.