A French retiree goes on trial Monday accused of recruiting dozens of strangers online to rape his wife after he drugged her into unconsciouness, in a case that has horrified the country.

Fifty other men are also on trial in the southern city of Avignon alongside the main suspect, a 71-year-old former employee at France’s power utility EDF.

They are accused of raping the woman who, her lawyers say, was so heavily sedated that she was not aware of the abuse.

The trial will be “a horrible ordeal” for the woman, now in her 70s, and who does not wish to be identified, said Antoine Camus, one of her lawyers.

“For the first time, long after the fact, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over 10 years,” he told AFP, adding that his client had “no recollection” of the abuses which she only discovered in 2020.

The woman could have asked for the trial to be held behind closed doors but didn’t, because “that’s what her attackers would have wanted”, Camus said.

“She is completely determined to face them and her husband with whom she lived for 50 years but whom she knew nothing about, as she discovered at 68,” the lawyer said.