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00:00a case that has sent shockwaves through France. A pensioner accused of drugging his wife
00:06and then inviting dozens of men to rape her over a period that spans almost a decade.
00:13In all, 72 men are on trial now, but only 50 have been tracked down by the police.
00:20For more on this story, I'm joined now by Annette Young, the host of our women's show,
00:24The 51%. And Annette, look, this is a really, really gruesome case. Just take us through
00:31the outlines here of what we're talking about. It truly is one of those most appalling stories
00:37that I've ever had to report on and talk about, Nadia. These horrific allegations go back to
00:43September 2020 when a security guard spotted a man behaving rather oddly in the eyes of a
00:49supermarket in a small town near Avignon in the south. And it turned out he was filming customers
00:55up their skirts. As a result, the police then started an investigation, seized the man's
00:59computer, and to their own horror, found thousands of photos and videos showing his wife Giselle
01:05being sexually abused by strangers who'd been recruited on a forum, an online forum,
01:11called Without Her Knowledge. It's a controversial website that was shut down by
01:16officials and the courts in last June. And basically what it is was a website, rather, that
01:24had men talking about performing sexual acts on women without the women realising.
01:29Now, as you pointed out, beside the husband, there's somewhere around 72 suspects in the case,
01:34but only 50 of them have been trapped down. Most of them will face up to 20 years in jail if found
01:40guilty for aggravated rape. Now, the accused men include a wide range of professions. They're
01:48anything from truck drivers, soldiers, firefighters, a prison guard, nurses, an IT consultant, and a
01:56local journalist. They range in age from 26 to 74. Many have children and are in existing
02:03relationships. Now, when police showed photos to the wife, she was not surprisingly incredibly
02:10shocked. She had no idea. Her and her husband had been together since they were 18, and she described
02:18him to the police as being a caring, kind, and considerate man. She had no memory of being raped,
02:23and only when she started going through these photos, she couldn't recognise any of them except
02:27for one who she realised was a neighbour in town. And during the course of this trial, she's actually
02:33agreed to and wants to witness the videos and photos that will be presented as evidence as part
02:39of the trial. And she does seem like an extraordinary woman because this is a profound trauma for her,
02:45of course, but she has waived her right to remain anonymous. Indeed, we've been showing
02:52footage of her in the courtroom. Indeed, Giselle, who's now 72, is doing this according to a lawyer
02:58because she wants to make sure it never happens again. And also, it's a very strong move. It's
03:04about giving power back to victims, to women whose lives have been destroyed by male violence. Her
03:12daughter, as well, who uses the pen name Carolyn Darien, wrote a book about this, entitled And I
03:19Stopped Calling You Papa, about the effect of the discovery of the crimes on her family. She herself
03:24was unknowingly photographed by her father, and she's now campaigning against the dangers of drug
03:30facilitated crime. She was a guest, as it turns out, on our French sister show, Actuelle, early
03:36in the year. And this is what she had to say. Let's take a listen. I was very close to my father
03:43and I had a close relationship with him. So the day we were told about this catastrophe,
03:50because there's no other word for it, it's very complicated to have to stand up and try to have
03:57a normal life. Because you know you'll never have a normal life again. As the child of a victim,
04:07like my mother was and is today. And as the child of an appalling abuser, like my father was.
04:17Well, that the daughter of Giselle, speaking to us earlier on this year. And Annette, look,
04:22this case throws up plenty of questions, some about consent, how consent operates in France,
04:28and also about the failure, apparently, of medics here to recognise that she was a victim for years
04:36of rape. Yes, first of all, let's talk about the notion of consent. And the other horrible side of
04:42this story, it's not so much the horrific nature of the crime, the depravity of it, in terms of
04:47being committed by a husband, but the fact that scores of men took part in this. I mean, which
04:52is just extraordinary. Now, rape is defined in the French law as an act of sexual penetration,
04:58committed by violence, coercion, threat or surprise. But what happens, obviously, when the
05:02victim is drugged, becomes a completely different story. And there's certainly a degree of confusion
05:09about that. As a result, a number of female MPs are wanting to amend the French rape laws. And
05:16they also want to broaden out the whole discussion to explicitly that, you know, we can talk about
05:22the notion of consent, that it's not just yes or no, but that consent can be withdrawn at any time
05:28during the actual process, but equally take into account those rapes which occur when the victim
05:34has been drugged. Of course, when you talk to these men, according to reporters, some of them have
05:41already admitted their guilt to police. Others say they were tricked into this situation by having
05:47sex with a drug woman, lured by the husband, and was told that she was pretending to be asleep
05:54because she was shy. Several said that they believed she'd been consented to being drugged
06:00and raped as part of a sexual fantasy. And they said they didn't believe it was rape because her
06:05husband was there, and they believed he could consent for both of them. And the lawyer representing
06:11the family told the New York Times, if that is the conception of consent in sexual matters in 2024,
06:17we have a lot of work to do. Coming back very quickly to the doctors, she had presented to
06:21doctors over a number of years with memory loss, fatigue. She contracted a number of sexually
06:29transmitted diseases. She had other ailments. No doctor had picked up or had alerted officials to
06:35their concerns as to the fact that there clearly was a problem and nobody gave a diagnosis. And
06:41that is a question that needs to be answered by the French medical profession as a result.