Court hearing in Hanover: drugged and raped, again and again

It took almost an hour for the prosecutor to read out the indictment against the 39-year-old on Thursday. He is accused of 103 cases, all of which are briefly described. He is said to have repeatedly drugged his then partner with ketamine and the sleeping pill zolpidem from November 2021 to March 2026 and sexually assaulted her. Once in a hotel, otherwise always in the shared apartment.

And he is said to have recorded the attacks, shared films, GIFs and photos in relevant chat groups and uploaded them to porn sites. As one of the investigators later described it in his witness statement, he is said to have exchanged chats with other men about how to abuse a sedated woman in such a way as to leave as few traces as possible.

The reading of the indictment is difficult to endure in its depth of detail. Just a few examples: According to the prosecution, there is a video in which the defendant can be seen stimulating his penis with the motionless hand of his unconscious partner and placing a note on her head that says "VIP Group only. Sleeping Slut". He is said to have forwarded this video to chat partners, the VIP Group.

In many other videos you can see him doing the “eye check”, i.e. pulling up the eyelids of his sedated victim. This check is popular in the scene to prove that the victim is not just pretending, but is actually unconscious.

Sometimes, according to the prosecutor, he molested his former partner for four or five hours, secretly filmed her drying off in the bathroom, masturbated next to her, spit in her face, and penetrated her orally, anally and vaginally with wooden sticks, cucumbers or glass dildos. The crimes he is accused of have become more frequent and violent over the years.

The victim found out about the allegations from the police, who came to their shared apartment with a search warrant and took her and her partner to the office. According to the investigator, she assumed that she had an intact relationship until the day the police came to her apartment. “She is very burdened,” says lawyer Christina Rust, who is defending her as a co-plaintiff. Her client saved herself the start of the trial.

The 39-year-old defendant is exercising his right to remain silent in the trial before the regional court in Hanover on the advice of a lawyer. And the presumption of innocence applies. During police interrogations, he admittedly said, for example, that he and his girlfriend shared a fetish and that everything was consensual. She denies that.

The analysis of the videos and chats that were found on the defendant's cell phones and other data storage devices weighed heavily on him. The investigators found around 42,000 videos on his two cell phones alone; they were all viewed; almost 1,400 are relevant to these proceedings before the Hanover Regional Court.

The investigators proceeded here according to the standards that are also used in child pornography cases, viewed every single video, formed clusters and only brought into the proceedings those videos that they knew for sure when they were recorded and were therefore able to assign them to an act. This is how the 103 indicted cases come about.

The investigator describes the complex as not ending with the charges in Hanover or at the national border. According to the evaluation, there were 78 follow-up proceedings against contact persons in Germany and at least ten other countries in Europe and beyond.

The responsible investigative authorities have identified further suspects. Among other things, an arrest warrant was executed in France. The investigative group also came across almost 100 as yet unidentified victims, who are still being investigated.

The 39-year-old Pole, who lives in Ronnenberg near Hanover, was ultimately tracked down because of the revelations surrounding Gisèle Pelicot. The French woman was drugged, abused and offered to rape dozens of strangers by her former husband for almost ten years.

The revelations surrounding the Pelicot case in France were followed by investigative research in Germany into an international rapist network in which the perpetrators organize themselves in Telegram groups, among other things. These in turn also led to “Project Medusa”, in which international investigators took targeted action this summer for the first time against online networks of men who drug their partners and then sexually abuse them.

In fact, as an investigator from the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) in North Rhine-Westphalia said as a witness in Hanover on Thursday, the Pelicot abuse scandal had led to a new focus, to the area of ​​crime: sedated women.

The witness is part of a corresponding investigative group that conducts independent research on the Internet. She calls it: going on patrol online. She and her colleagues came across the 39-year-old. After the man from the Hanover region was identified, the investigation continued in Lower Saxony.

Ten further dates are planned for the hearing before the Hanover Regional Court until the beginning of November. The taking of evidence will continue next Wednesday.