Prosecutors seek 20 years for man who organized wife’s mass rape in case that shocked France

A husband who organized the mass rape of his wife for nearly a decade, knocking her unconscious with drugs and sharing pictures and video of the assaults, should receive the maximum 20-year prison sentence, a French prosecutor said Monday.

Dominique Pelicot, 71, has admitted the charges in a trial that attracted worldwide attention and turned into an examination of the pervasiveness of sexual violence in France and beyond.

“The maximum sentence is 20 years, which is a lot… but at the same time … too little in view of the seriousness of the acts that were committed and repeated,” public prosecutor Laure Chabaud told the court.

Most of the 50 other men on trial have said they did not realise they were raping Gisele Pelicot, did not intend to rape her or put all the blame on her then-husband, who they said had manipulated them.

The prosecutors will over the next two days say what sentence they seek against each of them. The verdicts and sentences are expected around Dec. 20.

Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told reporters it was not a surprise that prosecutors had sought the longest sentence possible.

Gisele Pelicot, also 71, could have demanded the trial be kept behind closed doors, but instead asked for it be held in public, saying she hoped it would help other women speak up and show that victims have nothing to be ashamed of.

Video recorded by her husband and shown in court over the past weeks has repeatedly featured her motionless, sometimes snoring, while the accused, including her husband, abused her.