A shocking case of serial sexual violence has unfolded in Germany, where Berlin prosecutors have formally charged a 68-year-old man with drugging and raping 14 women he connected with through online dating platforms — and recorded the attacks on his personal devices. Prosecutors confirmed the defendant faces 22 counts of aggravated rape connected to the 14 identified victims, though investigators suspect he carried out non-consensual sexual acts against a total of 58 women over more than a decade of criminal activity.
The investigation into the man traces back to March 2025, when his profile appeared in chat logs linked to another sexual offender already under police surveillance following an anonymous tip. That co-person of interest has since died, but authorities moved quickly to search the 68-year-old’s Berlin residence last year. It was not until several months after the raid, however, that a forensic digital specialist uncovered graphic video footage of the assaults stored on devices seized from the home, which confirmed the suspected offenses.
Since March 2026, the accused has been held in pre-trial detention, and he has thus far declined to make any public statement regarding the allegations against his person. The case file has now been passed to Berlin’s court system, which will schedule procedural hearings to determine whether a full public trial will proceed.
According to official case details, the suspect’s alleged pattern of abuse followed a consistent template: he would first build contact with women via online dating platforms, then invite them to meet in person before lacing their drinks with a combination of sedative drugs and alcohol. Disturbingly, none of the 14 victims connected to the pending charges have any memory of being assaulted; they only learned of the attacks when investigators showed them the recovered video footage.
To date, law enforcement has successfully identified 30 of the 58 women captured in the suspect’s video records, while 10 others remain unaccounted for, with efforts to confirm their identities ongoing.
This high-profile case comes less than a week after another related sexual violence conviction made headlines in Berlin. A 32-year-old doctor of Chinese origin was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of aggravated rape, after the regional court found he was a member of an online chat group that shared tactics for raping unconscious, sedated women, and repeatedly distributed advice to other group members on carrying out these attacks. In that ruling, the presiding judge drew attention to a disturbing modern shift in sexual offending, noting that “sexual offences are no longer committed silently and in secret, but are publicly shared on the internet and applauded.”
In the current case against the 68-year-old, prosecutors were forced to drop 36 counts of alleged rape connected to one victim that occurred between 2010 and 2014, due to Germany’s existing five-year statute of limitations for most rape offenses. The 22 counts that do proceed fall under the 20-year statute of limitations for aggravated rape involving the use of force.
The limitations of current German law exposed by this case have given new momentum to long-debated legal reforms pushed by the country’s Justice Ministry. Just last month, Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig announced her support for extending the general statute of limitations for rape from five years to 20 years. Hubig has also put forward draft legislation that would create a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for anyone convicted of using so-called “date-rape drugs” to commit rape or robbery.
The proposed reform comes in response to a 2024 ruling from Germany’s highest court, which found that date-rape drugs added to a victim’s drink did not qualify as “dangerous items” under the current legal definition for sexual assault cases. That ruling effectively capped the mandatory minimum sentence for these offenses at three years. Under the government’s draft amendment, all dangerous substances and items used during the commission of a sexual offense or robbery will be reclassified alongside traditional weapons and dangerous implements, closing the legal loophole exposed by the high court’s decision.