The horrifying details of the case that shook the country, and the local mayor’s reaction, show a refusal to confront abuse

As the horror of how Dominique Pelicot drugged his wife, Gisèle, and allowed at least 83 men to rape her continued to unfold in a French courtroom last week, it was hard to see how the case “could have been worse” as one local official suggested.

Louis Bonnet, mayor of Mazan, the southern French town of 6,000 ­people where the Pelicots and a ­number of the alleged rapists lived, who added that “no one was killed”, later apologised and admitted his words were not “entirely appropriate”.