THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch police have detained four men in a major investigation into allegations of drugging and sexually abusing women they knew then sharing videos of the abuse, in a case that has echoes of French woman Gisèle Pelicot’s ordeal.
The suspects, whose identities were not released in line with Dutch privacy rules, were detained after police, acting on information shared by authorities in Germany and the United Kingdom, searched
several houses across the Netherlands over two days last week, police said in a statement Thursday.
“Information indicates that possibly multiple women in the Netherlands were drugged by someone in their immediate circle. Subsequently, sexual acts were performed on the victims while they were being filmed,” police said. They added that the men are suspected of using social media chat groups to share images of sexual abuse and information on how best to drug people.
It is still unclear how many people were abused. Police are trying to identify people who were abused from images on phones and computers seized in a series of raids last week.
“But what is clear is that this is a case with an enormous impact," Milou van der Kolk of the Rotterdam Sexual Crimes Team said in the police statement. "As a victim, you may not know what happened to you, because you may have been drugged and were unconscious. The news that your partner or an acquaintance may have drugged you and perhaps even raped you or attempted to do so can turn your life completely upside down.”
Police did not rule out making further arrests in the investigation.
In December 2024, Pelicot’s ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, and 50 other men were convicted of sexually assaulting her between 2011 and 2020, while she was drugged into submission. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while the other defendants received sentences ranging from three to 15 years.
Dominique Pelicot, whom Gisèle Pelicot had been married to for nearly 50 years, acknowledged that for years he mixed sedatives into her food and drink so he could rape her and invite other men to do the same.
