On the narrow streets of stone houses with pastel-blue shutters, residents of Mazan were appalled that this picturesque village in Provence, surrounded by vineyards and fruit trees, was being referred to in the media as “the village of the rapists”.
France has been shaken to its core this week by the trial of Dominique Pelicot, a former estate agent, who had moved from the Paris area to this southern village in retirement, where he is accused of drugging his then wife, Gisèle Pelicot, and recruiting men online to rape her when she was unconscious in her bedroom over a period of nine years between 2011 and 2020.
