MARSEILLE, France (AFP) — The mayor of the French town where a man for over a decade brought strangers to rape his wife apologised on Friday for remarks that were criticised for playing down the ordeal of the victim.

Louis Bonnet, 74, mayor of Mazan in southern France, told broadcaster BBC in an interview that “after all, no one died” about the mass rape for which dozens of men are on trial.

They are accused of raping Gisele Pelicot at the invitation of her then-husband Dominique Pelicot who drugged her first.

“It could have been far more serious,” Bonnet told the BBC. “There were no kids involved. No women were killed.”

Bonnet’s remark caused a storm of indignation on social media in France and beyond.

“People say I minimised the serious nature of the abject crimes of which the defendants are accused,” Bonnet said in a statement posted on Facebook.

“I understand that people are shocked by these remarks and I am truly sorry.”

The mayor said his apologies were addressed “notably to women who were hurt by the clumsy words that were pronounced under the pressure felt in front of the microphone of a foreign media”.

Mazan and its 6,000 residents had been under “constant media pressure” since the start of the mass rape trial this month, he said.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted to drugging Gisele Pelicot into unconsciousness and inviting strangers to rape her.

She has become a feminist icon since demanding a public trial.

The trial has horrified France, partly because 71-year-old Dominique Pelicot’s co-defendants include apparently ordinary men such as a fireman, a nurse and a journalist, many of them with families.

Forty-nine co-defendants are accused of raping or attempting to rape Gisele Pelicot, and one is accused of imitating Dominique Pelicot to sexually assault his own wife.