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A French pensioner went on trial Monday on charges of allowing scores of strangers to rape his wife after he drugged her, in a case that has horrified the country.

Fifty men, recruited online, are also being tried in the southern city of Avignon alongside the main suspect, a 71-year-old former employee at France’s state-owned power utility company EDF.

Police counted a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom were identified. The men, aged between 26 and 74, are accused of raping the 72-year-old woman who, her lawyers say, was so heavily sedated she was not aware of the abuse that went on for a decade.

Presiding judge Roger Arata announced that all hearings would be public, granting the woman her wish for “complete publicity until the end” of the court case, according to one of her lawyers, Stephane Babonneau.

“She wants to raise awareness, as widely as possible, of what happened to her so that events like these never happen again,” Babonneau said.

Another of her attorneys, Antoine Camus, said the trial would nonetheless be “a horrible ordeal” for her. “For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over 10 years,” he told AFP, adding that his client had “no recollection” of the abuse that she discovered only in 2020.

The woman, who arrived at the court supported by her three children, did not want a trial behind closed doors because “that’s what her attackers would have wanted”, Camus said.

Some came back six times

Police began to investigate the defendant, Dominique P, in September 2020 when he was caught by a security guard secretly filming under the skirts of three women in a shopping centre.

Police said they found hundreds of pictures and videos of his wife on his computer, visibly unconscious and mostly in the foetal position.

The images are alleged to show dozens of rapes in the couple’s home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people around 33 kilometres from Avignon in Provence.

Investigators also found chats on a site called coco.fr, since shut down by police, in which he recruited strangers to come to their home and have intercourse with his wife.

Dominique P admitted to investigators that he gave his wife powerful tranquilisers, especially Temesta, an anxiety-reducing drug. The abuse started in 2011, when the couple was living near Paris and continued after they moved to Mazan two years later.

The husband took part in the rapes, filmed them and encouraged the other men using degrading language, according to prosecutors.

No money changed hands.

The accused rapists include a forklift driver, a fire brigade officer, a company boss and a journalist. Some were single, others married or divorced, and some were family men.

Most participated just once, but some took part up to six times.

Murder probe

Many have said they thought they were simply helping a libertine couple live out its fantasies, but Dominique P told investigators that all were aware that his wife had been drugged without her knowledge.

An expert said her state “was closer to a coma than to sleep”.

Her husband told prosecutors that only three men left the house quickly after arriving, while all others proceeded to have intercourse with his wife.

Dominique P, who said he was raped by a male nurse when he was nine, was ready to face “his family and his wife”, his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told AFP on Monday morning.

“He is ashamed of what he did, it’s unforgivable,” she said, adding the case was one of a “sort of addiction”.

This trial may not be his last.

He has also been charged with a 1991 murder and rape, which he denies, and an attempted rape in 1999, to which he admitted after DNA testing.

Experts said the man does not appear to be mentally ill but in documents seen by AFP, they said he had a need to feel “all-powerful” over the female body.

More than a dozen feminists dressed in black protested outside the courthouse.

The trial is to last until December 20.

A school bus ploughed into a crowd of people outside a middle school in eastern China on Tuesday, killing 11 parents and students, state media reported.

State broadcaster CCTV said that the driver had “lost control” of the vehicle as it approached the school in Shandong province’s Tai’an city at 7:27 am.

The bus ran into a group of parents and children on the side of the road, according to CCTV.

“As of now, (the incident) has caused the deaths of 11 people, of whom six were parents and five were students,” the broadcaster reported.

It said that one other person was in a “critical” condition, while the vital signs of another 12 people were “stable”.

Photos and videos circulating on social media showed people in blood-soaked clothes lying in the road near a hulking grey bus. Several adults knelt over children and sprawled unmoving on the ground while other people were heard screaming in the background.

“They’re all dead, it’s so heartbreaking,” a woman’s voice was heard saying off-camera in one clip of the aftermath of the crash. “I’d have been killed too if I’d stood there, but luckily I ran away fast,” she said.

AFP geolocated several of the social media photos and videos to the school in Shandong, where the crash took place.

The driver was being held by the local police, and the cause of the incident was “under investigation,” CCTV said.

Many public schools in China reopened for the new academic year this week.

Deadly traffic accidents occur frequently in the country due to lax safety standards and widespread disorderly driving.

In July, police said a vehicle crashed into pedestrians in the central city of Changsha, killing eight people and injuring five. A 55-year-old suspect living in the area was detained pending an investigation, but it was not clear if the incident was intentional or not.

A 72-year-old woman in India became a victim of an online fraud in which she lost 72 lakh INR (Two crore 40 lakh PKR) from her bank account.

According to the Times of India, the incident occurred in Kerala, where the victim received a call from an impersonator allegedly posing as a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) official. The fraudsters informed her that her credit card had been blocked due to security concerns.

Later, the woman received a call in which the man claimed that a money laundering case was being filed against her, troubling her. They also showed the woman fake documents, including a First Information Report (FIR).

The woman was contacted through various methods, including video calls.

During the fake investigation, the caller asked the woman for her bank account information, which she gave them. The callers disconnected after that.
After the call, the older woman tried to unblock her card, but the fraudster stole 72 lakh rupees from her account.

Digital robbery is common in India. Digital criminals use fake call centers, pretending to be an employee of a tech company (i.e. Microsoft) and ask users to access their computer or any device to solve their problems. When given access by the users, they steal all their sensitive data, including bank account details.