Four men charged in France ‘libertine’ gang rape case

BORDEAUX: A French magistrate has charged four men in relation to alleged gang rapes involving torture in the swinging scene spanning more than a decade, the prosecutor’s office said Friday.

A 56-year-old man working in maintenance is the main suspect in the alleged mass abuse of several of his then partners in swinging clubs, the street or car parks, sometimes involving objects or animals in or near Bordeaux, newspapers Le Monde and Le Parisien reported.

The case was uncovered when one of the man’s ex-partners in 2023 told police he had repeatedly forced her into sexual violence involving multiple other men, the papers said.

The prosecutor’s office in the southwestern city of Bordeaux said charges were pressed this week against four men aged 40 to 57.

Five victims aged 45, 52, 56, 59 and 67 years old had come forward, it said.

“Clear” evidence had been found of lack of consent in incidents dating from 2011 to 2024, with “cries of pain” heard on several occasions, prosecutor Renaud Gaudeul added.

The former partner of the 56-year-old suspect first made a complaint in 2023 that she had suffered “what she described as gang rapes by her partner and men he invited” to take part from November 2020 to September 2023, the prosecutor said.

“She described her partner adopting a strategy of manipulation to force her into several gang rapes that were filmed,” he added, and four other successive partners of the man described “similar scenes”.

The maintenance worker does not deny the acts described, but says “these women were consenting” and they did not amount to rape, lawyer Julien Plouton said.

“He sees himself as someone who was practising libertine sexual pleasure,” Plouton said, describing the three other people charged as “regular participants”.

The case comes after a French court in December found 72-year-old Dominique Pelicot guilty of drugging his then wife Gisele Pelicot for almost a decade so strangers he recruited online could rape her in her own bed.

Dominique Pelicot, who meticulously documented the abuse in video footage, was jailed for 20 years in a case that has shone light on the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

In the case of the maintenance worker, police found dozens of videos at his home, his lawyer said, arguing this implicated many more men that those charged.

“Clearly we already have elements that pave the way to much wider circles” of people, he said.