Calls, videos and facial recognition: how did French police identify 50 rapists of a woman drugged by her husband to be raped?

The case of a man accused of raping a woman drugged by her own husband has caused a stir in France. According to a French police official on Wednesday, The discovery of the abuse would not have been possible without the error of the victim’s husband.who recorded images of the attackers whom he himself had contacted and invited via the Internet.

Among the defendants is Dominique P., A 71-year-old retiree, who is identified as one of the main perpetrators The accused have been on trial since Monday in the southern French city of Avignon, in a trial that will run until 20 December.

They are charged with aggravated rape, most of which were committed between 2011 and 2020, for which they could face sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

The crimes occurred mainly in the town of Mazan, where the couple moved after retiring from work.

Approximately 200 sexual assaults against Gisèle P., who is now 72 years old, were committed by 72 individuals. After two years of investigations, Authorities were initially able to identify 54 people. Of these, two were released due to lack of evidence and one more died.

“I have decided to form a small team of four detectives,” Commissioner Jérémie Bosse Platière told the court.

“I selected people with the strength to deal with the images,” he added, noting that the research process was long and exhausting.

The task was made easier by the thousands of recordings, photographs and videos captured by the victim’s husband. All this material was stored on a hard drive, where it was also detailed in detail. the names, ages and even phone numbers of those involvedorganized under a file titled “abuse.”

The husband also stored specific files related to each of the men who abused his wife.

“A record has been made for each subject, based on their case number,” said the commissioner. The goal was then to identify “Fireman Chris”, “Quentin”, “Gaston” or “David”.

Authorities used numerous records of calls and messages between the husband and his wife’s attackers.

These interactions began online, through the Coco.fr dating portal, and were later moved to a private space within the same site, which was closed by the courts in June for its character as a “predatory platform”. Subsequently, communications continued via Skype or telephone.

Facial recognition

A first list of 11 Skype users was tracked after requesting Microsoft to reveal IP addresses associated.

The same approach was applied to the phones: “We took the numbers from Dominique P.’s telephone bills and checked whether, on each date, there was a correlation between the recorded call and what appeared on the images,” Bosse Platière explained.

To identify these individuals, The researchers relied on telephone companies.

Another method used was the analysis of the recovered images, using a facial recognition system implemented by the French police.

“After obtaining the image, a coincidence index was generated that allowed us to identify a third of those involved,” said the commissioner.

Due to the number of people involved, the authorities made the arrests in five operations.carried out between the end of 2020 and September 2021.

Some of those involved maintain that they were simply taking part in the sexual games of an open-minded couple.

However, in none of the thousands of recordings does the victim appear “conscious” or make “any movement,” said Bosse Platière.

Most of the accused only went to the house on one occasion. Ten of them, however, returned on several occasions, staying up to six nights in some cases.

The husband did not ask for money in exchange for these actions and, in his words, “everyone knew” that his wife was under the influence of drugs and had not given her approval.

O Globo Brasil / GDA.

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*This content was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on information from O Globo Brasil (GDA). It was reviewed by a journalist and an editor.