A defendant in a mass rape trial that has horrified France told the court Wednesday that he “couldn’t control [his] sexuality” in six rapes of a woman drugged into unconsciousness.

“I didn’t go back there because I liked ‘rape style’ sex”, 46-year-old former supermarket worker Jerome V told the court in Avignon, where he is one of 51 defendants.

The men are accused of raping Gisele Pelicot, now aged 71, over almost a decade after responding to online invitations from her then-husband, Dominique Pelicot. He orchestrated the abuse while she was drugged with anxiety medication between 2011 and 2020.

“It was because I couldn’t control my sexuality,” Jerome V said when asked why he repeatedly returned to the couple’s home in the sleepy southern French town of Mazan.

Jerome V, who has admitted to aggravated rape charges, is one of 18 defendants being held in custody throughout the trial.

He claimed that when he first visited Mazan in spring 2020 after a breakup and during a Covid lockdown, where his “overwhelming sexuality” left him “unable to stand up to Mr Pelicot. I didn’t know how to say ‘no’ to Mr. Pelicot.” Jerome V first encountered Dominique Pelicot on the chat site Coco.fr, which has since been shut down by French authorities.

“The way [Pelicot] worked was to chuck in pictures [of his then-wife] … hoping to spark a reaction,” he said. “In my case, the photos had an impact. I wanted to get out of it, I fled, I hoped he wouldn’t contact me any more, but I didn’t do anything to stop it,” Jerome V acknowledged.

He ultimately visited the Pelicot home six times between March and June 2020.

“It’s difficult to tell you why I was unable to say ‘this must stop’,” he said. Jerome V said he was afraid Dominique Pelicot would publish the photos of him raping Gisele. “I was scared of the impact,” he added.

Dominique Pelicot filmed much of the abuse of his wife, a practice that later allowed police to identify many of the men suspected of raping her after his arrest when he was caught taking pictures up women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020.

Jerome V said he had been “under the spell” of Gisele Pelicot’s then-husband. Psychologists called the defendant “weak”, “naive” and “not very assertive” in testimony to the court.