ad

WARNING: Content in the following story may be disturbing for some readers.

A mass-rape trial in France has exposed what many have called a “rape culture” that has run rampant in the country. 

“Today I maintain that, along with the other men here, I am a rapist,″ Dominique Pélicot, 71, said during a court appearance on Tuesday. “They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.”

Gisèle Pélicot, 72, alleged that her husband had drugged her and allowed dozens of men to sexually abuse her over nearly a decade between 2011 and 2020 while the couple lived in the small town of Mazan. Dominique Pélicot admitted to the crime in addition to filming the assaults. 

His decision to forego anonymity in the trial is unprecedented and has taken many by surprise, but he stands by his conviction that he must face his crimes. 

CANADIAN MAN CAUGHT AT BORDER PLEADS GUILTY TO 4 COUNTS OF CHILD MOLESTATION

“One is not born a pervert. One becomes a pervert,” he told the court, claiming he had been raped by a male nurse in a hospital when he was nine years old and then forced to participate in a gang rape at 14.

“From my youth, I remember only shocks and traumas, forgotten partly thanks to her. She did not deserve this, I acknowledge it,” he said of his wife. If convicted, Dominique Pélicot faces 20 years in prison.

PENNSYLVANIA MAN ACCUSED OF RAPING WOMEN FROM DATING WEBSITE, INCLUDING TEENAGER

He now stands trial along with around 50 other men that authorities have identified and arrested through matching the media provided by Dominique Pélicot — many of whom have denied the allegations brought against them.

Dominique Pélicot’s testimony stirred media attention due to the shocking nature of his crime. He spoke for an hour while confined to a wheelchair following some health complications due to a kidney stone and urinary infection.

Dominique Pélicot stands trial along with around 50 other men. (Christophe Simon/AFP via Getty Images)

The court proceedings cannot be filmed or photographed, per French law, and Dominique Pélicot enters and leaves the court through a special entrance inaccessible to the media as he and some other defendants remain in custody during the trial. 

The other defendants instead claim they were manipulated by the husband or believed she had consented to the act. 

CALIFORNIA STATE SENATOR FORCED CHIEF OF STAFF TO PERFORM SEX ACTS THAT LEFT HIM INJURED: LAWSUIT

Dominique Pélicot first crossed law enforcement after they caught him taking photos of women’s crotches at a supermarket. An investigation uncovered the trove of thousands of pictures and videos that depicted the assaults on his wife. 

The couple remained married for 50 years until the attacks came to light and police shared the media with Gisèle Pélicot, who called the revelation “unbearable.” The couple had three children together. 

A mass-rape trial in France has exposed what many have called a “rape culture” that has run rampant in the country.  (Christophe Simon/AFP via Getty Images)

“For me, everything collapses,” Gisèle Pélicot testified. “These are scenes of barbarity, of rape.”

French authorities have determined that a total of roughly 72 men participated in the decadelong rape scheme. Their ages range from 26 to 68 and come from a variety of backgrounds, including firefighters, journalists and pharmacists, according to the BBC. 

The Fondation des Femmes told NBC News that the trial is a “symbol of the worst that male violence can do,” describing the crimes against Gisèle Pélicot as “barbaric” and her decision to publicly testify as brave. 

“It is not for myself that I am testifying, but for all the women who suffer chemical submission,” Gisèle Pélicot said during her testimony.

Céline Piques of the group Osez le Féminisme has argued that this case counters the narrative of “the rapist who is a psychopath” who “raped because they were sure of their impurity.” 

Piques pointed to the website that Dominique Pélicot used to invite men to his home, which had over 500,000 visitors a month last year, noting that “100% of these people… never made a phone call to stop this abuse.”

“Not one man thought about informing the police of these criminal facts,” Piques said. 

Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Instagram is introducing separate teen accounts for those under 18 as it tries to make the platform safer for children amid a growing backlash against how social media affects young people’s lives.

Beginning Tuesday in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, anyone under under 18 who signs up for Instagram will be placed into a teen account and those with existing accounts will be migrated over the next 60 days. Teens in the European Union will see their accounts adjusted later this year.

Meta acknowledges that teenagers may lie about their age and says it will require them to verify their ages in more instances, like if they try to create a new account with an adult birthday. The Menlo Park, California company also said it is building technology that proactively finds teen accounts that pretend to be grownups and automatically places them into the restricted teen accounts.

The teen accounts will be private by default. Private messages are restricted so teens can only receive them from people they follow or are already connected to. “Sensitive content,” such as videos of people fighting or those promoting cosmetic procedures, will be limited, Meta said. Teens will also get notifications if they are on Instagram for more than 60 minutes and a “sleep mode” will be enabled that turns off notifications and sends auto-replies to direct messages from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m.

While these settings will be turned on for all teens, 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to turn them off. Kids under 16 will need their parents’ permission to do so.

“The three concerns we’re hearing from parents are that their teens are seeing content that they don’t want to see or that they’re getting contacted by people they don’t want to be contacted by or that they’re spending too much on the app,” said Naomi Gleit, head of product at Meta. “So teen accounts is really focused on addressing those three concerns.”

The announcement comes as the company faces lawsuits from dozens of U.S. states that accuse it of harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.

In the past, Meta’s efforts at addressing teen safety and mental health on its platforms have been met with criticism that the changes don’t go far enough. For instance, while kids will get a notification when they’ve spent 60 minutes on the app, they will be able to bypass it and continue scrolling.

That’s unless the child’s parents turn on “parental supervision” mode, where parents can limit teens’ time on Instagram to a specific amount of time, such as 15 minutes.

With the latest changes, Meta is giving parents more options to oversee their kids’ accounts. Those under 16 will need a parent or guardian’s permission to change their settings to less restrictive ones. They can do this by setting up “parental supervision” on their accounts and connecting them to a parent or guardian.

Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said last week that parents don’t use the parental controls the company has introduced in recent years.

Gleit said she thinks teen accounts will create a “big incentive for parents and teens to set up parental supervision.”

“Parents will be able to see, via the family center, who is messaging their teen and hopefully have a conversation with their teen,” she said. “If there is bullying or harassment happening, parents will have visibility into who their teen’s following, who’s following their teen, who their teen has messaged in the past seven days and hopefully have some of these conversations and help them navigate these really difficult situations online.”

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said last year that tech companies put too much on parents when it comes to keeping children safe on social media.

“We’re asking parents to manage a technology that’s rapidly evolving that fundamentally changes how their kids think about themselves, how they build friendships, how they experience the world — and technology, by the way, that prior generations never had to manage,” Murthy said in May 2023.