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00:00Angela, there's so much so extraordinary about this case. Tell us more.
00:04Yeah, it is astonishing. This was uncovered. The accused, Dominique Pellicou, was spotted
00:14by police filming under the skirts of women in his local supermarket. In the subsequent
00:20investigation, they took his computers, his mobile phone, and they uncovered this astonishing
00:26situation. He is accused of recruiting strangers on a website to visit his home after he had
00:39drugged his wife on several occasions and raped her. This went on for 10 years. She apparently
00:48had no idea about anything, and she reported memory lapses, headaches, because she was being
00:56heavily sedated. She also had some sexually transmitted diseases, but had no idea this
01:03was going on until she was called into the police station and the films were shown to her. He
01:08documented everything. He logged the details and the names of the people he recruited,
01:15and all of this is documented. It's unusual. He has pleaded guilty. He has pleaded fully guilty
01:25to all of this. So this is not a trial of rape where there's a he said, he said, she said
01:31situation. He has said he did this. The men who visited his home and are accused of raping his
01:40wife, their defense is mostly they say they didn't realize they thought it was some sort of sex game.
01:46They didn't realize that she was sedated. Dominique Pelico says he told all of them,
01:53and that there were very specific instructions to follow. The men had to park away from the house.
01:59They had to undress in the kitchen so that no clothes would be left in the bedroom.
02:03They had to be sure not to wear perfume or smoke cigarettes in case the smell awoke her,
02:09and they had to warm their hands before touching her. Those, of course, appear to contradict their
02:16evidence. While you were speaking, we were showing some footage behind you of the men who are also
02:22part of this case who covering their faces with hoodies and masks, what have you. Now this story
02:30has shocked so many people in France. I feel that everyone is talking about it.
02:34Yeah, it's not the sort of story we always cover here on France 24, but it is impossible
02:38to ignore such as being the impact. 72 suspects were identified. That doesn't mean that is all,
02:45but that's a number that police have been able to identify. 50 of them are being tried. One of them
02:51is being tried in absentia. Of those, 18 are in custody. 32 people are walking around the village
02:58where these events took place, many of them. Some of their identities have been shared on social
03:04media. The atmosphere in this small village of 6,000 people is extraordinary. This has been going
03:10on since 2020 when the case first emerged. It has had so much impact in so many ways. It has also
03:19highlighted the issue of what is now known as chemical submission. Many people didn't fully
03:26realize the extent of what you think it's something you see in television police series,
03:31drugging people to perform sexual assaults on them. Another key thing is the website
03:38where these people were recruited. It has now been closed down, but a page on that forum,
03:42the page where they were recruited, was called A son insu. Now, roughly translated, that means
03:48while she or he was unaware. Committing sex acts on people while they're unaware under French law
03:58is rape. How was that site out there? It's now closed down. So many questions have arisen about
04:04this and it has stunned the country. It's one of those stories, I don't know what to say.
04:11Thank you very much for that, Angela De Fleda.