The raping of vulnerable bodies by multiple perpetrators, in a domino effect, is as old as rape itself. In her 1992 book Cris de haine et rites d'unité, la violence dans les villes, XIIIe-XVIe siècle ("Cries of hatred and rites of unity: violence in towns, 13th-16th centuries"), historian Nicole Gonthier observed that "rape, and especially gang rape, is practiced obsessively".
Her work was cited by sociologist Laurent Mucchielli in a research article entitled "Gang rape: myths and reality" published in 2005. Almost 20 years ago, this researcher was already highlighting the perennial nature of gang rape, unearthing from the archives of French magazine L'Express an article from 1966, in which its author was moved by "a new outbreak of the scourge".
It reads: "A boy picks up a girl. Usually at a funfair or youth club. He offers transport to a second place... Sometimes it's his girlfriend that he [does this to]. In a public square, a wood. In a second home in the suburbs. Most often, a cellar in a large apartment block. The violence that follows is confusing. Sometimes the act takes place in a group, sometimes the gang has each member [take their turn with] the victim in isolation. Voyeurs hide in the surrounding area. The scenes are almost always recorded. Frequently, the degradation of the [victim] is accompanied by real torture."
On August 21, 1974, three men gang-raped Anne Tonglet and Aracelli Castellano, two young Belgian tourists camping near Marseille. Four years later, however, the aggravating circumstance of gang rape was not upheld by the jury at the trial, which became famous for leading to France's 1980 law reinforcing the criminalization of rape.
The phenomenon is not, of course, confined to France. Americans were deeply scarred by the infamous case of the New Bedford bar rape, when on March 6, 1983, a 21-year-old woman was raped by four men in a bar in a Massachusetts port town.
In France, in the early 2000s, people were talking about "tournantes" – a slang term that roughly translates as "rotating" and one which served to obscure the reality of gang rapes in working-class neighborhoods. In 2002, Samira Bellil published a book on the subject, entitled Dans l'enfer des tournantes ("In the hell of gang rapes") in which she recounted the rapes she suffered as a teenager on her housing estate in Sarcelles, north of Paris.
In 2012, the whole of India was shaken by a gang rape that occurred on a New Delhi bus. Six men assaulted Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old student, so violently that she died of her injuries two weeks later. That year also saw the trial of Nina's 15 attackers, who regularly raped her for six months in 1999 in the cellars and stairwells of apartment buildings in Fontenay-sous-Bois, an eastern suburb of Paris. The young woman said she no longer wanted to be "a piece of meat to be passed around," and gave her testimony in newspaper Le Parisien to "encourage other young women to call out what they are going through." Twelve years later, Milly's words echo Nina's, and the trial of her attackers will take place before the same Créteil juvenile court.