Forty-nine co-defendants are accused of raping or trying to rape Gisele Pelicot (File)

The mayor of the French city the place a person for over a decade introduced strangers to rape his spouse apologised on Friday for remarks that have been criticised for enjoying down the ordeal of the sufferer.

Louis Bonnet, 74, mayor of Mazan in southern France, instructed broadcaster BBC in an interview that “in spite of everything, nobody died” in regards to the mass rape for which dozens of males are on trial.

They’re accused of raping Gisele Pelicot on the invitation of her then-husband Dominique Pelicot who drugged her first.

“It might have been much more critical,” Bonnet instructed the BBC. “There have been no children concerned. No ladies have been killed.”

Bonnet’s comment precipitated a storm of indignation on social media in France and past.

“Folks say I minimised the intense nature of the abject crimes of which the defendants are accused,” Bonnet mentioned in a press release posted on Fb.

“I perceive that persons are shocked by these remarks and I’m really sorry.”

The mayor mentioned his apologies have been addressed “notably to ladies who have been damage by the clumsy phrases that have been pronounced below the stress felt in entrance of the microphone of a international media”.

Mazan and its 6,000 residents had been below “fixed media stress” because the begin of the mass rape trial this month, he mentioned.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted to drugging Gisele Pelicot into unconsciousness and welcoming strangers to rape her.

She has develop into a feminist icon since demanding a public trial.

The trial has horrified France, partly as a result of 71-year-old Dominique Pelicot’s co-defendants embody apparently peculiar males similar to a fireman, a nurse and a journalist, a lot of them with households.

Forty-nine co-defendants are accused of raping or trying to rape Gisele Pelicot, and one is accused of imitating Dominique Pelicot to sexually assault his personal spouse.

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