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'I stopped counting at 487 men': French banker jailed for 25 years for torturing, raping ex-partner
Laetitia testified that she lived in “constant fear” throughout the relationship and described the abuse as “pure and simple violence”.
A French bank manager has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of torturing and raping his former partner over a seven-year period.
According to news agency AFP, Guillaume Bucci, 51, was found guilty of subjecting Laetitia R, a 42-year-old mother of 4, to years of violent abuse between 2015 and 2022. The survivor told the court that she “stopped counting at 487 men” whom she was allegedly forced to sleep with at Bucci’s direction.
The court heard that Bucci forced Laetitia to endure degrading acts, including drinking his urine, licking public toilets and having sex with strangers, truck drivers and men he allegedly recruited online and through his personal circle, as per a report by the New York Post.
Bucci admitted to numerous disturbing acts, including strangulation, burning and bestiality, but insisted they were “consensual sexual games”. He told the court that he “did not think he was hurting her”, despite prosecutors presenting messages in which he allegedly threatened to kill her if she disobeyed him.
Laetitia testified that she lived in “constant fear” throughout the relationship and described the abuse as “pure and simple violence”. “Little by little, I felt like I was dying inside. With each practice imposed, there was a part of me that broke permanently,” she told the court through tears, as per the New York Post.
(Also Read: ‘Why did you keep your former husband’s last name?’: Rape survivor Gisèle Pelicot’s powerful answer)
‘I stopped counting at 487 men’
The 42-year-old said that Bucci gradually treated her “like a slave” and pushed her into having sex with other men, beginning on Christmas Eve in 2015 at a motorway service station while he listened over the phone. “I stopped counting at 487 men, some of whom I had seen up to 10 times,” she testified, adding that the men included “friends, colleagues, and strangers.”
The abuse allegedly continued even after she gave birth to their daughter in 2017. The court heard that she was forced to perform a sex act with a truck driver the day after being discharged from the hospital.
Prosecutors had sought a life sentence, arguing that Bucci posed a continuing danger and could “reoffend against another woman”. However, the court sentenced him to 25 years in prison. He will only become eligible for parole after serving at least two-thirds of the sentence.
The case emerged in the wake of the landmark Gisele Pelicot trial, which sparked nationwide outrage in France. Pelicot’s husband was sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging her and recruiting strangers to rape her while she was unconscious. Laetitia said that the Pelicot case inspired her to finally speak publicly about her own ordeal.
