Drugged and raped by dozens of strangers recruited on the Internet by her husband at her home for more than ten years, Gisèle P. remained stoic on Tuesday as she listened to a long and crude summary of the facts that prompted her daughter to leave the courtroom.
The victim’s daughter, Caroline Darian (her pen name for the book she published in 2022, “And I stopped calling you dad”, Editor’s note), was seized with tremors twenty minutes after the start of this second day of hearing, before the criminal court of Vaucluse, in Avignon.
She broke down in tears when President Roger Arata reported on photomontages of her naked, which had been found on her father’s computer in a folder entitled “Around my daughter, naked”.
Her two brothers, sitting next to her, tried to support her, as did her mother, who placed a hand on her leg. But, faced with the litany of details, Caroline Dorian finally left the room shaking and in tears, escorted by her two brothers and her lawyer, Me Antoine Camus, before returning some twenty minutes later.
Gisèle P., in a white shirt, did not show any emotion.
Facing her, at the other end of the room in the box reserved for the 18 accused detainees, her husband, in a gray T-shirt, remained impassive. From time to time, he glanced toward the room where the 32 other accused appearing free, with their lawyers, were seated.
“Given the number of accused, the mass of information seized and in order to have information for everyone, the upcoming reading will be concise and focused on the salient points of the case,” Roger Arata had specified at the start of his speech.
– “mode viol” –
The president of this criminal court composed of five professional magistrates then began in a monotonous and cold tone his reading of the summary of a 31-volume case file, for which 51 men (including one on the run, editor’s note) will be judged for four months.
Without a word for Gisèle P. and her three children, many intimate details of whom will be revealed throughout the day.
On Monday, the closed-door hearing requested by the public prosecutor and some of the accused was refused, with the main victim hoping that the “shame would change sides”.
Apart from the main accused, only 50 attackers out of the 72 identified by investigators based on the photos and videos found have been arrested, risking up to 20 years in prison for aggravated rape.
The statement of facts begins on September 12, 2020 with the arrest of Dominique P., now 71, by a security guard at a supermarket in Carpentras (Vaucluse) after filming customers up their skirts.
In his pocket, condoms and a camera. When questioned, he then explained that he had “acted on impulses” that he “could not control”.
In police custody, he explained that his wife (the couple has been in the process of divorcing since the facts were revealed) had been absent from the marital home for a month and that he had “had urges” for two weeks.
But during several searches, investigators came across thousands of photos and videos in which his wife was raped at her home by strangers recruited on the internet.
Dominique P. used the forum of a controversial site, coco.gg, closed since June by the courts under the pseudonym “Marc Dorian”, to recruit them. “You’re like me, you like rape mode”, he had said to one of his interlocutors in a discussion found by investigators.
To others interested in his method, he explained that by administering sleeping pills to his wife – 450 pills were ordered in the space of a year, according to health insurance – he could abuse her and obtain practices that she would normally refuse.
