Berlin’s public prosecutor charged a 68-year-old man with the aggravated rape of 14 women, accusing him of searching for victims on dating platforms, drugging them and filming his attacks, in a case that has drawn comparisons with the rape of Gisèle Pelicot in France.
Investigators believe there could be as many as 58 possible victims and are working to bring more charges. In the indictment announced on Tuesday, the man was charged with 22 counts of rape and inflicting dangerous bodily harm, which stem from drugging each victim before the assault. The authorities did not publicly identify the man in keeping with German privacy laws.
The suspect, a German national who worked as an electrician, has been in jail since March, and the prosecutor’s office said he has refused to cooperate with investigators. It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.
Officials in Berlin said that the case began only after police in another state, Lower Saxony, discovered the man’s online chats with a person accused in a similar case. That led to a raid on the electrician’s home, where investigators searched hard drives and found videos of the assaults on women.
The women interviewed by the authorities were not able to recall the attacks, the prosecutor’s office said. Investigators believe the man drugged the women during dates, with a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills.
Prosecutors had charged the same man before, accusing him of assaulting one woman 36 times between 2010 and 2014. But without enough evidence to prove the victim had been drugged, prosecutors ultimately dropped those charges and treated the case as simple assault. Under German law, such cases carry a five-year statute of limitations, which has expired.
The case has quickly drawn comparisons in Europe to that of Ms. Pelicot, whose former husband, Dominique Pelicot, admitted to drugging and raping her and recruiting dozens of strangers to do the same in their home. By waiving her anonymity during the 2024 trial, Ms. Pelicot became the face of a discussion around sexual consent and systemic abuse. Fifty-one men were found guilty, and Mr. Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
That discussion led to a proposal in Germany this summer to change the country’s sexual assault laws. Justice ministers from the country’s 16 states rejected the proposal to require active consent — a policy of “yes means yes” — and kept the current standard, which only requires a lack of dissent — “no means no.”
