The trial of Dominique Pelicot, a man who orchestrated a nine-year campaign of abuse by drugging his wife before inviting dozens of men to rape her, has disgusted and captivated France since it got underway on Monday.

In the past two days the court has heard how Mr Pelicot, 71, sent a torrent of depraved messages to willing participants in a sordid chatroom, telling those who accepted the invitation to abuse his wife: ‘You’re like me - you like rape mode.’

The court has also seen 50 men paraded into the dock, all of whom are on trial alongside the deranged mastermind for aggravated rape.

But Mr Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, has already provided in skin-crawling detail an extensive account of her father’s heinousness.

In her book entitled ‘And I Stopped Calling You Papa’, Darian - a pen name - explains across 176 pages the ways in which her father cruelly manipulated, abused and destroyed the physical and mental health of his wife Gisele before his dark deeds were eventually discovered in November 2020.

She writes how her father ‘dressed Maman like a low-rent prostitute’ and forbade many of the men he invited to the family home from wearing a condom as they abused her unconscious mother - including one who even tested positive for HIV.

And she explained how she was confronted with the reality that she too had been drugged by her own dad, dressed in underwear and left in the foetal position as he snapped away with a camera.

Darian fled the courtroom in tears on Tuesday after those images were discussed amid the trial.