A German court has convicted a man of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife over a period of years, then posting videos of the abuse online.
The defendant, identified as 61-year-old Fernando P., worked as a school janitor.
Judges found that he assaulted his wife in their home while she was unconscious, secretly recorded the acts, and shared the footage on the internet without her consent.
On Friday, a court in Aachen in western Germany sentenced him to eight years and six months in prison.
The court said the ruling can be appealed within one week.
According to the judges, the man violated his wife’s privacy and personal rights in 34 separate cases.
Among them were four charges of aggravated rape, along with offences involving dangerous bodily harm.
He was also found guilty of aggravated sexual assault and sexual coercion.
In its statement, the court said the defendant repeatedly sedated his wife without her knowledge, sexually abused her at home, filmed the incidents, which he later shared in group chats across various online platforms.
Prosecutors accused him of crimes spanning almost 15 years.
The court ultimately convicted him of offences committed between 2018 and 2024.
He was acquitted on some additional charges, although the court has not released further details.
The verdict comes just a year after the case of Dominique Pelicot, a man from Mazan who spent nearly a decade recruiting dozens of strangers through an online chatroom to rape and abuse his then wife.
Pelicot was later convicted of aggravated rape.
In that case, 49 other men were also found guilty of sexual assault or rape.
According to Nur Ja Heisst Ja, a campaign group pushing for changes to how rape is defined in law, the Aachen ruling is the first case of its kind to be heard in German courts.
Last year, investigative reporters in Hamburg uncovered evidence that a man had spent 14 years uploading videos to an adult website that showed him drugging and raping his wife.
However, the man was never prosecuted and later died in 2024.
Just across the border in France, lawmaker Sandrine Josso also stressed that existing laws need to be updated to better protect women from this type of abuse.
For Josso, the issue is not just political.
In November 2023, she alleged that she was drugged at a party by then 66-year-old French senator Joel Guerriau. She later filed a criminal complaint, although Guerriau has denied all wrongdoing.
