Her Husband Allegedly Drugged Her So More Than 80 Men Could Rape Her. Today, She Faced Him In Court.

A woman whose husband is accused of drugging her and recruiting dozens of men online to rape her while she was unconscious gave powerful testimony against him in a French court on Thursday, as she seeks a public reckoning for his alleged crimes.

Gisèle Pélicot, 72, stood before her now-ex-husband, Dominique Pélicot, and some of the 50 other men charged with raping her.

During an unrelated investigation in 2020, police retrieved photographs and video of Pélicot being raped from her husband’s laptop and other devices. Pélicot said she had been unaware of the near-decade of alleged abuse until police showed her the images.

“I only wanted one thing and that was to disappear,” Pélicot testified about that moment, The Times reported .

But now, four years after the abuse, Pélicot wants the world to know what happened to her. She objected to a request by the prosecutor and the defendants’ lawyers to hold the trial behind closed doors, The Guardian reported.

Pélicot hopes to raise awareness about date rape drugs and to shift the blame and shame from survivors to their attackers, her lawyers say.

“[She] believes that she has no reason to hide,” attorney Stéphane Babonneau said in a hearing Monday. “No one can imagine that my client will find any satisfaction in exposing what she has suffered. She wants this hearing to be open so that justice can be done in public.”

The case has drawn international media coverage, and one French reporter in the courtroom who sketched Pélicot on Thursday described her “incredible dignity and strength.”

Dominique Pélicot admitted that he drugged his wife with powerful tranquilizers and used a messaging website to invite at least 80 men to rape her between 2011 and 2020, The Times reported. He had