Live updates: Gisèle Pelicot’s ex-husband sentenced to 20 years in mass rape trial

A court in Avignon will soon decide the fates of Dominique Pelicot and dozens of other men, ending a week-long mass-rape trial that has stunned France and shocked the watching world.

The 72-year-old faces conviction for repeatedly raping and enlisting strangers to abuse his heavily drugged then-wife, Gisèle Pelicot, in the couple’s home over a decade.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted to using an online chatroom called Coco to recruit men to rape his wife. Pelicot told the trial that responsibility for the rapes should be shared between the accused, saying: “I am a rapist just like everyone else in this room.”

Gisèle Pelicot was drugged by him and, while he was unconscious, raped more than 200 times by 70 men, all of whom first met Pelicot online, prosecutors say. Police released hundreds of hours of footage showing the rapes filmed by Pelicot.

Fifty other men accused of taking part in the assaults have also been charged. Some of the defendants have admitted their guilt, while others say that Dominique Pelicot manipulated them into having sex with his wife, that they believed the wife had pretended to be asleep or that it was a sex game.

The prosecution has requested sentences of four to 20 years for the 51 defendants. The maximum prison sentence of 20 years has only been requested for Dominique Pelicot himself.

While some of the defendants have pleaded guilty, the majority have denied the rape allegations, saying they believed the man’s consent was sufficient and that they were manipulated by Pelicot into believing it was part of a consensual game between the couple.

Public prosecutor Laure Chabaud told the court in Avignon, southern France, last month that Dominique Pelicot’s sentence would be “long” but “not enough given the serious nature of these actions.”