To the policeman at the Carpentras police station (Vaucluse) who asks her to talk about her husband, in November 2020, Françoise P. (the first name has been changed) describes him as “a great guy”, caring and caring. Fifty years of common life, three children, the couple sinks a retirement ” happy “ in their house in the village of Mazan. So, yes, on September 12, 2020, there was indeed a small incident that Dominique P., her husband, confessed to her: he had just been arrested for having filmed the intimacy of women at the local supermarket. But she quickly forgave him, it was not in his habits: they have a sexuality “normal”. Asks him for a little partner-swapping, which she refuses – she doesn’t like being touched without having feelings.
A month and a half later, this former salesman in real estate then electricity return to custody. Because, during the preliminary investigation opened in September, the police seized his telephone, his computer and his hard drives. Inside, thousands of exchanges on a dating site, Coco.fr, and especially on a specific chat room, called “A son insu” – a forum, still active to this day, in which many men discuss sexual relations that they manage to obtain without the knowledge of their partners, ie rape, according to the penal code. Dominique P. regularly administers several Témesta tablets to Françoise, a powerful anxiolytic that he crushes in his evening dinner. He then invites the strangers from the forum into the marital bedroom to deliver her unconscious to rape.
As a collector, he films everything. While searching on a USB key, the investigators come across a file entitled “ABUSE”. The titles of the hundreds of videos indicate a date, a first name and the nature of the actions: “ABUSE/night of May 26, 2020 with MARC SODO 5e time ” Or “ABUSE/night of 09 06 2020 with Charly 6e time “. All this has been going on for almost ten years, from July 2011 to October 2020. One hundred and twenty-eight subfolders emerge. Ninety-two rapes committed against Françoise are listed. A list of 83 attackers is drawn up. The Carpentras police identify 51 of them, all arrested during a dozen waves of arrests, then imprisoned, and whose referral to the departmental criminal court for aggravated rape was requested by the Avignon prosecutor’s office.
If the investigating judge follows the prosecutor’s indictment, a historic trial will be held in the spring of 2024, with 52 defendants in the same box, many of them appearing detained. This document, released by The Parisian and viewed by The world, is 350 pages. With 52 men implicated, 52 psychological profiles, professions, intimate lives and lines of defense will be found at the same time before the court. Ordinary men, who draw their justifications from the classic breviary of rape cases, where the seriousness of the facts is misunderstood, minimized or assumed.
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