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Man found guilty of drugging, raping and filming his wife for years
19th December, 2025 07:37 PM
A German man has been found guilty of drugging and raping his unconscious wife for years and sharing videos of his crimes on the internet, in a case that has drawn comparisons to the trial of Dominique Pelicot in France.
Fernando P., a 61-year-old school janitor, was found guilty of abusing his wife inside the couple’s home, filming it and then sharing it online without the victim’s knowledge.
He was sentenced on Friday, December 19, 2025, to 8 years and 6 months in prison following a trial at a court in Aachen, western Germany. An appeal may be filed against the judgment within one week, the court said.
The court said the man violated “the most intimate sphere of private life and of personal rights through image recordings in 34 cases, including in four cases in concurrence with aggravated rape and dangerous bodily harm.” He was also convicted on charges of aggravated sexual coercion and sexual assault.
“The defendant repeatedly secretly sedated and sexually abused his wife in the marital home,” the court said in a statement. “He also filmed the acts and made the recordings available to other users in group chats and on internet platforms.”
Accused of crimes spanning nearly 15 years, the court found him guilty of offences between 2018 and 2024.
He was acquitted on some other charges, details of which have not been released by the court.
The verdict comes exactly a year after Frenchman Pelicot – who solicited dozens of strangers from a chatroom for a nearly 10-year period to rape and abuse his then-wife Gisèle – was found guilty of aggravated rape. Forty-nine other men were all found guilty of rape or sexual assault in that case.
The Pelicot case shocked the world and sparked a cultural reckoning on gender-based violence and misogyny in France.
A very significant case
The Aachen case is the first of its kind to be heard by the German courts, according to the campaign group Nur Ja Heisst Ja, whose name – translated to “Only Yes Means Yes” – highlights its mission to change how rape is legally defined.
Last year, Hamburg-based investigative journalists unearthed evidence of a man who, for 14 years, had shared videos on an adult website said to be showing the drugging and raping of his wife. But that man was never charged; he passed away in 2024.
The Aachen case is ” very significant,” said Jill S., an activist from Nur Ja Heisst Ja who asked CNN not to use her last name to avoid online abuse, because “It’s a case that kind of shows where there are gaps in our legal system,” she told CNN before the verdict.
In Germany, consent has traditionally been defined through the “no means no” principle, which campaigners say deprives victims of sexual abuse – particularly those who have been drugged, like in the Aachen case – of the ability to give explicit consent for sexual acts.
