to France now and a trial that has gripped the nation and made International headlines a man accused of drugging his wife and allowing dozens of men to rape her on camera for almost a decade had been expected to take the stand in southern France for the first time today but a couple of hours ago it was announced that Dominique pelico is sick earlier our world affairs correspondent Andrew Harding shared the latest I've just come out of the courtroom where Dominique pelico was expected to be this morning and to give evidence this afternoon but he complained yesterday of some sort of unknown stomach bug or illness and left court then we were expecting his lawyer was expecting him to return today to take the stand but we've since been told by his lawyer in a phone call to the courtroom that uh he won't be in court the judge president said there could be a delay of one day 2 days three days possibly through to next week so uh frustration in court um we saw carolene the daughter of the pelicos showing real frustration as she sat there next to her mother jizelle who showed no emotion jizelle of course spoke last week very powerfully very movingly and talked about the strength that she needed to remain calm but she talked of the sort of inner trauma that she was disguising she continues to to hide that trauma um but everyone here waiting to hear how Mr pelico will seek to provide context for his ACT the facts themselves are already clear they've been captured on film the police have them Mr pelico has confessed but he's expected to talk about childhood trauma The Experience he says of being raped at the age of nine of taking part in some sort of violent group assault on a woman when he was 14 perhaps not to justify but to give context to his extraordinary actions over the past decade or more and Andrew for anyone who might have missed the the basic background to this incredibly distress in case can you just spell that out what what is the background here so Dominique pelo 71 now but for a decade he drugged his wife uh and invited mostly local men from a 10 kilometer radius about 80 men to come for no money but simply so he could film them raping his wife as she lay unconscious heavily sedated in their in the couple's bed he was only discovered a couple of years ago when some women complained that they'd seen him upskirting filming their skirts in a public place the police arrested him and then during the course of a search of his laptop they found all these other shocking images and it was only then that jizelle pelo discovered what her husband had been doing Andrew Harding there