The 50 men accused in mass rape of Gisèle Pelicot

They are young, old, burly, thin, black and white. Among them are firefighters, lorry drivers, soldiers, security guards, a journalist and a DJ.

These are the 50 men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at the behest of her husband, Dominique Pelicot, 72, who drugged her for a decade with prescription sleeping pills.

The fact they broadly represent a microcosm of French society means they have been dubbed Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr Everyman).

Next week they are due to be sentenced, at the end of a trial that started in September. If found guilty, collectively they face more than 600 years in jail.

A few of them act defiant, but they mostly look down as they answer questions from the judges, looking up occasionally to catch their lawyers’ eyes for reassurance.

Warning: You may find some of the details of this story disturbing

Most of the 50 all come from towns and villages in a 50km (30-mile) radius of the Pelicots’ own village of Mazan.

Some defence lawyers have seen in their ordinariness a valuable line of defence. “Ordinary people do extraordinary things,” said Antoine Minier, a lawyer representing three defendants.

“I think almost everybody could end up in a situation – well, maybe not exactly like this one – but could be susceptible to committing a serious crime,” he told the BBC.

Prosecutors have based their sentencing demands to the court on aggravating factors. How many times the defendants came to the Pelicot home, whether they touched Gisèle Pelicot sexually, and if they penetrated her.

Joseph C, 69, a retired sports coach and doting grandfather, faces four years in jail for sexual assault if found guilty. That is the most lenient sentence requested by prosecutors.

At the other end of the scale, is Romain V, 63, who faces 18 years in prison. He was knowingly HIV-positive and is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six separate occasions without wearing protection – although his lawyer told the court he had treatment for several years and couldn’t have transmitted the virus.

Prosecutors have been able to go into this level of detail because, unusually for a rape trial, there is a staggering amount of evidence, as the alleged assaults were filmed over almost a decade by Dominique Pelicot.

He has admitted all the charges against him and has told the court all 50 of his co-accused are guilty too.

All the video evidence means none of the men have been able to deny they ever went to the Pelicots’ home. But the majority vehemently contest the charges of aggravated rape that would incur hefty sentences.

France’s rape law defines rape as any sexual act committed by “violence, coercion, threat or surprise”; it has no reference to any need for consent.

Therefore, they also argue they cannot be guilty of rape because they were unaware Gisèle Pelicot was not in a position to give her consent.

“There can be no crime without the intention to commit it,” said one defence lawyer.

“My body raped her, but my brain didn’t,” insisted volunteer firefighter Christian L, in an example of the convoluted reasoning offered by some of the men.

The one man of the 50 who is not accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot is Jean-Pierre M, 63, who has been dubbed Dominique Pelicot’s “disciple”.

Having learned how to drug his wife in order to abuse her, he did so for five years and admits it.

He blames his crimes on meeting Dominique Pelicot, who he says was “reassuring, like a cousin”. Prosecutors are seeking a 17-year jail term.

Ahmed T, a 54-year-old plumber who has been married to his childhood sweetheart for 30 years, said that if had he wanted to rape someone, he would have not chosen a woman in her 60s.

Redouane A, an unemployed man aged 40, argued that if he had set out to rape Gisèle he would not have allowed her husband to take videos.

Some also say they were intimidated by Dominique Pelicot, who one lawyer told the BBC, was an “abominable character”.

In tears, male nurse Redouan E told the courtroom he was too scared of him to leave the bedroom. “Maybe you can’t tell from the videos, but I was really terrified!” he told judges.

Others maintain they were offered drinks that were spiked with drugs and therefore cannot remember the encounter, although Dominique Pelicot has denied ever doing this.

The majority, however, maintain they were manipulated or tricked by Dominique Pelicot, who convinced them they were taking part in a sex game with a consensual couple.

“They were put in a situation where they were scammed,” Christophe Bruschi, Joseph C’s lawyer, told the BBC. “They were taken for a ride.”

But Dominique Pelicot has always said he made it abundantly clear to the men that his wife was not aware of the plot.

He gave them instructions to avoid waking her up or leaving traces that they had been there – such as warming their hands before touching his wife, or not smelling of perfume or cigarettes, he said.

“They all knew, they cannot deny it.”

Since September, the 50 men have appeared, one after the other, in front of the court in Avignon.

Usually in rape cases character investigations can take several days.

In this trial, because of the sheer number of defendants involved, they have been condensed into a few hours at most. Their lives have been dissected at record speed, often turning the court session into a litany of stories of abuse and trauma.

Simoné M, a 43-year-old construction worker, said he was raped when he was 11 by a family friend who employed him to look after cattle in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.

Father-of-four Jean-Luc L, 46, told the court how he and his family had left Vietnam on a dinghy when he was a child and lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for several years before moving to France.

Fabien S, a 39-year-old man with several previous convictions including drug dealing and sexual assault of a minor, was abused and beaten by foster parents from a very young age. Like several others, he said he only realised during psychiatrist appointments ordered by the court that his hazy, painful childhood memories actually constituted rape.

Many wives, partners and family members of the defendants were called up to give character statements. They, too, scrambled for answers as they sought to understand how the men in their lives could have ended up “caught up in this kind of situation”, as one woman put it.

“I was shocked, it doesn’t sound like him at all. He was the joy of my life,” said the elderly father of Christian L.

The firefighter is also being investigated for possessing child abuse imagery, as are four others, and faces 16 years in jail. “Something must have happened, he must have become depressed,” his father wondered aloud.

Corinne, the ex-wife of 54-year-old Thierry Pa, a former builder, said he had always been “kind” and “respectful” to her and their children and appeared to leave the door open for a reconciliation him.

“When they told me what he was accused of I said: ‘never, that’s impossible… I don’t understand what he’s doing here at all.'” She believed it was the death of their 18-year-old son that had led her ex-husband to fall into a deep depression, start drinking and eventually make contact with Dominique Pelicot.

“I will always be there for him, whatever happens,” said the ex-girlfriend of Guyana-born Joan K. At 27, he is the youngest of the defendants and a former soldier in the French army.

He has denied raping Gisèle Pelicot on two occasions. While he knew she would be unconscious, he said he had not realised she had not given her consent.

In floods of tears, a woman called Samira said she has spent the last three and a half years “looking for answers” as to why Jérôme V had gone to the Pelicots’ six times.

“We had daily intercourse, I don’t understand why he had to go look elsewhere,” she sobbed. She is still in a relationship with Jérôme V, who was working at a greengrocer’s at the time of his arrest.

He is one of the few who have admitted to raping Gisèle, saying he liked the idea of having “free rein” over her – but blamed it however on his “uncontrollable sexuality”.

Many former and current partners of the defendants have undergone tests to see if they too had been drugged like Gisèle. One woman said she would “always have a terrible doubt” that the “respectful, thoughtful, sweet man” she knew had abused her too without her knowledge.

Since the start of the trial, much has been made of the need to find an element that ties all these men together.

A common denominator – beside the fact that all the men went to the Pelicots’ of their own free will – “remains nowhere to be found,” Gisèle’s own lawyers have said.

But there is one factor all the defendants indisputably have in common: they all made the conscious choice not to go to the police.

Firefighter Jacques C, 73, said he had considered it but “then life just carried on”, while electrician Patrice N, 55, said he “didn’t want to waste the whole day at the police station”.

In the early days of the trial, Gisèle Pelicot was asked whether she thought it was legitimate to think the men had been manipulated by her husband.

She shook her head: “They didn’t rape me with a gun to their heads. They raped me in full conscience.”

Almost as an afterthought, she asked: “Why didn’t they go to the police? Even an anonymous phone call could have saved my life.”

“But not one did,” she said after a pause. “Not a single one of them.”