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The Chat Room Behind the Pelicot Rape Trial | The New Yorker

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For years, Dominique Pelicot drugged his wife and invited strangers to his house to rape her. At the trial, none of the explanations for these events quite fit—apart from an online platform called Coco.

Save this story Save this story There were two rooms at the Pelicot mass-rape trial in Avignon: the courtroom for the press, and a live-feed room for the public. From the day it began, in early September, women lined up outside the courthouse before 7 A.M. in order to secure one of sixty seats in the latter, the salle de retransmission . Two retired women were always at the front: Bernadette and Brigitte. Bernadette came, she said, to see how justice worked; Brigitte because this was a live version of the crime shows she liked to watch on TV. Both admitted that, once they started coming, they

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