Abuse trials in Germany: Networked rapists

By Nadine Conti, Lilly Schröder and Anna Simbürger

In short, this is a kind of Pelicot process. It takes place in Hanover, but it could also take place anywhere else - trials like this are being carried out all over the country because the perpetrators network and exchange information online and one thing leads to another in the investigation. It's about men who drug, rape and film their partners - sometimes for years, sometimes for decades. In Lower Saxony alone, three such investigation complexes have come to light in the last two years. The case of 68-year-old Frank S., who is said to have raped and filmed up to 59 women in his apartment, is still being heard in Berlin.

In Hanover it is now about Grzegorz C. For five years he is said to have repeatedly and brutally abused his then partner in their shared apartment in the Ronnenberg district. The prosecution lists 103 individual rapes - and these are only the ones for which the police were able to assign the videos to a date with sufficient certainty. There were even more acts and many more videos, but they did not become part of the indictment.

The first two days of the trial consisted solely of the statements of a total of seven police officers who had to solve this digital forensic puzzle and then tried to compare it with the statements of the largely memoryless victim and those around her.

There are a number of parallels to the process that caused a stir around the world in 2024. The trial of Dominique Pelicot, who drugged his wife Gisèle for over 10 years and not only raped her himself, but also offered her to other men to rape, while he filmed everything and neatly archived it. Here too, these numbers were shocking: 10 years, 200 individual rapes, 70 perpetrators - of which only 51 could be charged and convicted because the rest could not be identified with certainty.

Many reporters have described how oppressive it was to sit in the courtroom among these perpetrators - apparently normal men - because the dock was not big enough. They also described how easy it was for Dominique Pelicot to track down these accomplices: All of them lived in the area, no more than an hour or an hour and a half's drive from the crime scene in the southern French province.

Grzegorz C. also probably dreamed of offering his then partner to other men. At least that's what it says in chats that were evaluated by the police. There are even pictures that show multiple penises or men. The police are now relatively certain that these are clumsy photo montages in which Grzegorz C. has mostly reproduced himself, pixelated and distorted with Snapchat filters. He probably raped and abused her most of the time alone.

But this procedure also gave rise to 78 further investigations. Against the perpetrators who exchanged materials with him, applauded him, and sought his advice. And that begs the question: How many of these types are there actually out there? And how can it be that they remained undisturbed for so long? You inevitably ask yourself that when you sit in this courtroom and look at the men present: judges, lay judges, defense attorneys, sergeants, witnesses, spectators. How many of them secretly enjoy raping unconscious women?

Conversely, with regard to this victim, the question arises: Why didn't she notice anything? And as with Gisèle Pelicot, the answer is: of course she did. And others too. She repeatedly complained of attacks of dizziness, headaches and back pain, numbness in her fingers and toes, and a ringing in her ears. Sometimes, her boss testified to the police, she showed up for work in the morning and was completely out of her mind, swaying and uncoordinated. She estimates she had to send them home ten to fifteen times.

There were all sorts of guesses as to what might be causing it: a stroke, a herniated disc, the thyroid, the kidneys, maybe cancer. But the investigations revealed nothing; it is not standard practice to examine urine or blood for the remains of narcotics in cases of such suffering.

And when she wanted to go to the doctor again, she told the police, the alleged perpetrator would often say: "That's no use, you're just getting old." Sometimes he also came with me to the doctor. He is said to have mostly used zolpidem to anesthetize her, and occasionally ketamine. He had been prescribed zolpidem by his family doctor for sleep disorders. He is said to have recommended this to others in chats.

But when it comes to the question of why she didn't notice anything, there is of course something else that resonates. Are these men really two-faced, as was said in the Pelicot case? Or did you just not look closely enough?

In her book “Living with Men,” published in early 2025, Manon Garcia dissects very carefully that both may be true. On the one hand, there are stories of Dominique Pelicot's choleric outbursts, his attacks on his daughter, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and previous family stories that revolve around incest and abuse. They all raise doubts about the facade of the perfect husband and devoted family man that he is described as. And at the same time, Garcia describes, we live in a long cultural tradition in which male violence and assault are trivialized, excused and hushed up. Some of what is now retrospectively read as an early warning sign is shrugged aside in other contexts - when it comes to great art or artists, for example. Then they say: It's not that bad, it's a private matter, she must have done her part.

In the trial against Grzegorz C. the taking of evidence is still at the very beginning. At first we don't learn anything about the couple's everyday life, there are only a few hints. Once, the police chief says, his ex-partner showed up at work with a black eye. She said, at least that's what the officer in charge said in court, that he only hit her in the face with the palm of his hand once during an argument and that was a slip-up. While searching the apartment, the police noticed a spot on a connecting door where he had obviously hit his fist. He is also said to have tried to prevent or shorten family visits and to control and isolate them.

He himself had hardly any social contacts, less than a handful, but all the more online. It probably started on the platform with the significant name motherless.com, named after the pseudonym of its founder. The site has been temporarily taken down following investigations in the Netherlands. Until May of this year, amateur porn and depictions of abuse of all kinds could be found there - completely openly. For a while, the content could be filtered using hashtags such as #consensual and #nonconsensual. From there, Grzegorz C. then switched to closed Telegram and Snapchat groups, which work in the same way as with child rapists: only those who upload material themselves can get in.

The dynamic that the whole thing then unfolds for him is reminiscent of an addiction or online radicalization: the attacks become more and more extreme and more brutal, and the quality of the images becomes ever higher. While he initially limited himself to groping the unconscious women and masturbating next to them, even with his ex-wife in Poland, to whom he is said to have done something similar, he soon moved on to oral, vaginal and anal rape, not only with his penis, but also with various objects - cucumbers, dildos, wooden sticks, glass bottles. He ties her up and beats her, spitting on her.

And yet the judge has to ask every single officer over and over again: "Do you have any indication that this might have been consensual? That she pretended to be asleep or agreed to be drugged?" Because that's the current standard excuse among these perpetrators: a shared kink. No, says one police witness after another, nothing in these videos seemed “consensual.” On the contrary: Whenever it seemed for a moment as if she might wake up, C. stopped and waited until she had completely stepped away again.

In the chats he only refers to her as a “sleeping bitch”, “whore”, “slut”. Validation from other men seems to play an extremely important role. Almost manically, he repeatedly uploads material and demands recognition. There is also evidence of live broadcasts, which, however, could not be evaluated because they were not recorded. According to one of the police officers, they sometimes wondered whether the whole thing had a bisexual component because he was so vehemently demanding dick pics from other men. In many of his films he doesn't have a full erection. He constantly treats his penis with hair ties, cock rings and a vacuum pump. This was also a recurring theme in the Pelicot trial: some of the rapists there felt the same way.

This shouldn't make much difference to the victim. Dealing with victims of violence in investigations and trials is a special problem; a lot has already been written about the secondary traumatization that goes along with it. But in these cases the problem takes on a dramatic dimension of its own.

The woman completely collapsed, says the police officer who, together with a colleague, took over the second and third interviews. They only showed her two very short video sequences from the hours of material. And: No, he did not advise her to wait until the process was completed before starting therapy. Even if he knows that this is common practice, “in order not to jeopardize the integrity of the taking of evidence,” as is usually said.

What the young police officer couldn't do, however, was answer the victim's countless questions. At later appointments, for example to take a hair sample to prove that narcotics had been administered, she provided the information. She wanted to know how long this had been going on, what he had done, how often and when. Unfortunately he couldn't tell her that, he replied. You have to wait for the trial.

There she acts as a co-plaintiff, which gives her access to the files through the lawyer. She cannot testify publicly like Gisèle Pelicot. She feels too bad for that. The public should also be excluded from showing the videos. This is the case in many of these procedures and is probably one of the reasons why they receive so little attention. That's how bitter it is.

What differs significantly between the procedures and courts, however, is how the “victim witnesses,” as they are called in court, are dealt with. In Hanover, the chamber only allows a video hearing from another room at the last moment and after long discussions. And only after she criticized the certificates from the therapist and the family doctor as inadequate - because a date was missing somewhere or the woman was described as not being able to provide any information at all. Her lawyer primarily wants to prevent her from having to meet the perpetrator directly again. But the woman definitely wants to testify in court.

In the Berlin trial against Frank S., the presiding judge Jakob Weber regularly and freely approved these types of applications. He also tries to ask his questions carefully. If the questions that the presiding judge asks the injured parties could be understood as an apportionment of guilt, he will classify them beforehand. Example: "Please don't take my question as an accusation. I have to ask you this: How many cocktails did you have the night you met Frank S.?" According to a trainee teacher, the appreciative treatment of the injured parties is unfortunately exceptional in cases of this kind.