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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFrance Confronts Horror of Rape and Drugging Case as 51 Men Go on Trial
For years, she had been losing hair and weight. She had started forgetting whole days, and sometimes appeared to be in dreamlike trances. Her children and friends worried she had Alzheimer’s.
But in late 2020, after she was summoned to a police station in southern France, she learned a far more shattering story.
Her husband of 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, had been crushing sleeping pills into her food and drink to put her into a deep sleep, the police said, and then raping her. He had ushered dozens of men into her home to film them raping her, too, they said, in abuse that lasted nearly a decade.
Using the man’s photographs, videos and online messages, the police spent the next two years identifying and charging those other suspects.
On Monday, 51 men, including Mr. Pelicot, went on trial in Avignon, in a case that has shocked France and cast a spotlight on the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse and the broader culture in which such crimes could occur.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/02/world/europe/france-husband-rape-drug-trial-mazan.html?
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According to studies: 1/3 of men would commit rape if they knew they could get away with it.

CrispyQ
(39,367 posts)So they are probably the second third of the men in the study you mention.
Delphinus
(12,205 posts)their effing peckers off. NOW. Each and every one of them.
PCIntern
(27,216 posts)My mother told me that during World War II, men would bring their wives in cars or vans to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard where she worked, on payday and charge anywhere from 2 to 5 dollars a throw.
These “customers” included men with whom she worked directly and she couldn’t look at them after she saw this.
obamanut2012
(28,364 posts)She said the same thing, literally the exact same scenario at the same place.
PCIntern
(27,216 posts)obamanut2012
(28,364 posts)RainCaster
(12,491 posts)Which I think is so wrong...
jimfields33
(19,382 posts)The article explains a lot.
RainCaster
(12,491 posts)But I could still see defense attorneys asking for a dismissal based on spousal rape if this took place in some states here in the US.
al bupp
(2,432 posts)ms liberty
(10,111 posts)obamanut2012
(28,364 posts)A friend (woman) who has lived both there and Italy said the Italian men get the grief, but compared to Frenchmen, the Roman men were a cakewalk.
2naSalit
(96,270 posts)People who vote for you know who.
Bev54
(12,313 posts)victim but none of her husband or the other accused. Why?
dickthegrouch
(3,968 posts)And they’re shamelessly shaming the victim instead of the perpetrators.
French law might not allow them to show photos pre-conviction.
Abolishinist
(2,357 posts)You need the permission to take the picture of someone or a group of people.
So the victim allowed the picture to be shown as she hopes that the Avignon trial will draw attention to the use of drugs to prey on women, and also shed light on the wide profile of predators. “They could be your neighbors, without falling into paranoia,” she said.
Coexist
(26,202 posts)IronLionZion
(48,280 posts)

Warpy
(113,132 posts)The worst is someone I cared for when I was all of 19 years old. I won't describe it here.
Knowing how depraved and emotionally dead some men are has given me massive trust issues.
a kennedy
(33,176 posts)🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬
Earthrise
(15,731 posts)Pelico began. Drugging his wife because she wouldn’t consent to wearing certain types of clothes or engaging in certain acts.
Many of the men who raped Pelico’s wife didn’t believe it was rape because they thought the husband could consent for the wife.
Stunning layer after layer of misogyny.
peggysue2
(11,728 posts)How a husband could do this to his wife of 50 years is mind-boggling. How he could so easily recruit other men to rape his drugged wife is equally horrifying. And then, keep video evidence of the rapes!
Sick, sick, sick.
May all the perpetrators rot in jail! And yes, neutering them all would be fair justice.
Poor woman. Not sure how you recover from such a monstrous betrayal, not only the rapes but the sexual diseases she's been left with. The one man reportedly (BBC story) had HIV.
Monstrous.