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I can't really imagine all of those men thought they were knowingly raping this guy's wife against her will. I have to believe he told them it's her kink to be drugged up and raped and then she wants to watch the videos later. Or something. This is a lame excuse but I can see at least a few pathetic horn dogs falling for it.
Now let me see if any of the men offered any defense.
Update: I'm back. A few of the men said they thought it was a role play situation and that they were led to believe this by her husband. But most of them sound utterly indefensible. So, I underappreciated the horror by quite a bit.
There's a full table here with notes about each man and their defenses, if available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelicot_rape_case#Convicted
They kind of sound like the dregs of society to me.
But yes, what is there to say? You can find dirt bags to do sex crime if you look long enough. The were all publicly shamed and convicted. The right thing happened, at least. My update is France takes these crimes more seriously than I would have expected. Also the right thing.
I'm slightly reassured it was only 72 men over 9 years and not, like, a thousand. Suggests the candidate pool is not a vast ocean.
She was in late middle age.
The dates given in the Wikipedia article for the incident suggest that the victim was about 59 years old at the start of the incident, and it continued until she was about 68.
Where I'm from, I think that'd be called "old age". And to @ActuallyATleilaxuGhola's point above, it seems like a stage of life where it'd be pretty normal to have a lot of unexplained aches and pains.
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