An Avignon court will soon decide the fate of Dominique Pelicot and dozens of other men, bringing to an end a weeks-long mass rape trial that has stunned France and horrified the watching world.

The 72-year-old is facing punishment because he is said to have repeatedly raped his heavily sedated wife Gisèle Pelicot and recruited strangers to abuse her over the course of a decade in the couple’s home.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted using an online chat room called Coco to recruit men to rape his wife. Pelicot said at the trial that responsibility for the rapes should be shared among the defendants, saying: “I’m a rapist, just like everyone else in this room.”

He drugged Gisèle Pelicot and, while she was unconscious, raped her more than 200 times by 70 men, all of whom met Pelicot online for the first time, prosecutors say. Police discovered hundreds of hours of footage showing the rapes filmed by Pelicot.

Fifty other men accused of involvement in the abuse are also on trial. Some of these defendants have admitted their guilt, while others claim that Dominique Pelicot manipulated them into having sex with his wife, that they believed the woman was pretending to be asleep, or that it was a sex game.

Prosecutors have requested prison sentences of between four and 20 years for the 51 defendants. The maximum prison sentence of 20 years was only requested for Dominique Pelicot herself.

While some of the defendants have pleaded guilty, the majority have denied the rape allegations, saying they believe the husband’s consent was sufficient and that Pelicot manipulated them into believing it was consensual play between the couple act.

Prosecutor Laure Chabaud told the court in Avignon, southern France, last month that Dominique Pelicot’s sentence would be “long” but “insufficient given the seriousness of these crimes.”