Gisèle Pelicot, who was drugged and raped by dozens of men recruited by her husband, said on Wednesday “forgiveness does not exist”, rejecting claims by him and one of his chief accomplices that they regretted harming the women they loved.

The trial in the southern French town of Avignon of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men accused of raping his wife has shocked the world. The case has also triggered protests across France in support of Gisèle Pelicot, who has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence.

“These men are degenerates. They committed rape,” Gisèle Pelicot, 72, told the court after her now ex-husband Dominique and the accomplice, Jean-Pierre Marechal, gave testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively. “When they see a woman sleeping on her bed, no one thought to ask themselves a question? They don’t have brains?”

Dominique Pelicot, 71, is also accused of having raped Marechal’s wife at her home after drugging her, with the collaboration of her husband.

Gisèle Pelicot insisted on a public trial in an attempt to expose her former husband and the 50 men he is accused of inviting to rape her in a small village in southern France.

“Today forgiveness does not exist,” Gisèle Pelicot told the court as she described how her former husband had taken mistresses without hiding the fact from her, and she defended herself from some of the criticisms levelled against her.

“I have felt humiliated while I’ve been in this courtroom. I have been called an alcoholic, a conspirator of Pelicot,” she said, adding her life had been “destroyed” for 10 years. “In the state I was in, I absolutely could not respond. I was in a comatose state; the videos show that.”

The Pelicots’ daughter Caroline, whose photographs were found on her father’s devices, was on the verge of tears in the courtroom as her mother spoke.

Reuters