A woman who was allegedly drugged by her ex-husband so that she could be raped by other men while unconscious said Thursday that her world collapsed when police uncovered the years-long abuse.

In a calm and clear voice, Gisele Pelicot described to the court in the southern French city of Avignon her horror at the discovery that her former husband had systematically filmed the alleged rapes by dozens of men – and had saved thousands of images that police investigators later found.

“It’s unbearable,” she said. “I have so much to say that I don’t always know where to start.”

Dominique Pelicot, now 71, and 50 other men are on trial for rape. They face up to 20 years in prison. The trial began on Monday and is expected to last until December. Gisele Pelicot testified for the first time on Thursday.

The Associated Press does not typically name victims of sex crimes, but Gisele Pelicot’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, said she accepted the publication of her name, just as she insisted that the trial be held in public.

She told the court she hoped her testimony would help spare other women from similar ordeals. She said she was pushing for a trial in open court in solidarity with other women whose victims of sexual crimes are not recognized.

She and her husband had lived with their three children in their family home in a small town in Provence for 50 years before their world collapsed at the end of 2020.

“I thought we were a close couple,” she said in court.

But a security guard caught her husband taking photos of women’s crotches in a supermarket. Investigators then searched Dominique Pelicot’s phone and computer. They found thousands of photos and videos of men apparently raping Gisele in her home while she appeared to be unconscious.

Shocked, she left her husband after the police showed her some of the pictures.

“For me, everything is falling apart,” she said. “These are scenes of barbarism, of rape.”

She left the city with two suitcases, “everything I had left from 50 years of life together.” Since then, she said, “I have no identity anymore. … I don’t know if I can ever rebuild myself.”

Police investigators found messages that Dominique Pelicot allegedly sent via a messaging website commonly used by criminals, in which he encouraged men to sexually abuse his wife. The website was shut down.

During the trial, broad details emerged of the alleged abuse of power, which investigators say began as early as 2011, and of the complex system Pelicot had built over a period of ten years.

Men invited to the couple’s home had to follow certain rules – they were not allowed to speak loudly, had to take off their clothes in the kitchen, were not allowed to wear perfume and were not allowed to smell of tobacco, French media reported.

Sometimes they had to wait up to an hour and a half in a nearby parking lot until the drug took full effect and rendered Gisele Pelicot unconscious.

“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” she testified. “They looked at me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.”

Because Dominique Pelicot recorded the alleged rapes on video, the police were able to track down most of the 72 suspects they were looking for over the course of two years.

In addition to Pelicot, 50 other men between the ages of 22 and 70 are on trial. Several defendants deny some of the charges against them and claim they were manipulated by Pelicot.

Over the next few months, the defendants will appear in small groups before a panel of five judges. Pelicot is scheduled to speak next week. Psychologists, psychiatrists and computer experts will also testify.