51 Men on Trial in Horrific French Rape and Drugging Case

Fifty-one men are today on trial in Avignon, France, related to the drugging and raping of a woman over the span of a decade, in a bombshell case that has rocked the entire nation. The woman’s husband of 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, had been crushing sleeping pills into her meals. According to police, when she was passed out, he would rape her. He then began inviting other men to rape her as well, filming those encounters.

The men accused range in age from 26 to 74, and they come across French society, including truck drivers, soldiers, and a journalist. According to The New York Times, one of the men also began following Pelicot’s model and began drugging his own wife to rape her. Some of the men claim that they assumed the woman had consented, or that her husband’s permission was all they needed for the sexual encounter; Pelicot has admitted guilt.

The trial is rattling France, raising questions about sex crimes and predatory culture. There are lawmakers who hope the trial will lead to amendments in how rape is defined by French law—to include language that sex without consent is rape, for example, and that consent cannot be given when a person is impaired or drugged. Many, too, wonder how medical professionals never suspected something like this could be happening. The victim, who had been experiencing hair and weight loss and whole behavior had friends worried she had Alzheimer’s, had visited numerous doctors and gynecologists over the years searching for answers over her condition. As one French lawmaker told the Times, “There is a kind of naïveté on the topic of predators in France, a kind of denial.”