Last Updated on 04/09/2024 by Arun jain
Police used facial recognition technology to identify and arrest dozens of men who raped a pensioner’s drug-addled wife, a French court heard on Wednesday.
Dominique Pellicote, 71, is accused of recruiting 50 strangers through an online forum to have sex with his wife Giselle, 72, who he sedated with powerful tranquilizers in one of the most shocking rape cases in modern French history.
It came to light by chance when the father of three, a retired employee of energy supplier EDF, was caught upskirting women in a local supermarket in 2020.
On the third day of the trial in the southern city of Avignon, the lead investigator, Jerome Boss Plattier, spent much of the morning detailing footage of the alleged sexual assaults that Pellicote had filmed and carefully stored in computer files under a folder called “abuse”. “
There was a sub-folder for each man who allegedly raped his wife. All of these were under aliases such as “Chris the Fireman”, “Quentin”, “Gaston” and “David the Black”.
Mr. Bose Plattier said: “A [police] A list was then prepared for each person by file name,” adding that his team worked to identify the men behind the aliases.
From a list of 72 people suspected of abusing Ms Pellicott, around 50 suspects, aged between 26 and 74, have so far been identified and tracked down. Most rapists face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
To identify the men, investigators used facial recognition software that “enabled us to identify a third of the criminals”, he said.
Investigators examined numerous telephone bills, pictures and videos, numerous telephone exchanges and online conversations between the husband and his wife’s suspected attackers.
Mr Bose Plattier said police looked at Pellicot’s phone bills and recovered images to see if there was any link between the calls and the alleged rape cases.
Pellicote also blocked numerous contacts on his phone, raising the suspicions of investigators. Mr Boss Plattier said it took the police about two years to identify the men behind the phone numbers.
At least 35 defendants have pleaded not guilty. Fourteen people, including Pellicote, have pleaded guilty.
Graphic descriptions of the footage seen by investigators were used to counter the claims of many of the defendants that they had not committed the rape.
Instead, they claimed they were participating in a consensual libertine orgy and that Mrs. Pellicott played in her sleep.
The court heard that Mrs Pellicott, who remained passive in court, “snored loudly” during most of the rape and her husband waited “for an hour and a half” for her abusers to make sure she was unconscious, the investigator said.
They were then told to undress in the living room or kitchen “always outside the bedroom” and reminded to “make no noise, discreet, very quiet”.
Asked if Ms Pellicott was aware of what was going on, Mr Boss Plattier said: “Absolutely not. The victim does not appear conscious in any of the videos,” he said.
The trial continues.
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