Court finds defendant remains a danger
The Berlin Regional Court convicted the German national of 22 counts of rape and dangerous bodily harm, as well as violations of intimate privacy through recordings in some cases. He sedated the women by putting substances in their drinks and filmed some of the assaults at his apartment in Berlin-Lichtenberg.
The judges said detention after his prison sentence was necessary because he remained a danger to the public. He must also pay some victims tens of thousands of euros in compensation for pain and suffering. Presiding Judge Jakob Weber said the defendant had deliberately sought victims and described the emotional toll the proceedings had taken on those involved.
Prosecutors had requested 13 years in prison followed by preventive detention. Defense lawyer Jochen Schöfthaler sought no more than eight years and argued that the court should, at most, reserve a decision on preventive detention for later. The ruling is not yet final.
Media reports, including ZDFheute, identify the convicted man as Frank S. He has been in pretrial detention since March.
Women learned of the assaults during the investigation
The attacks prosecuted at trial took place between 2016 and 2022, when the women were between 50 and 60 years old. The defendant, a trained electrician, met them through online dating platforms. They lived in Berlin and Brandenburg.
He sometimes claimed to be a police commissioner and sometimes a Bundeswehr pilot, reportedly presenting himself as charming and romantic. The women accompanied him to his apartment voluntarily. According to the indictment, he served alcoholic drinks containing a sedating substance, then raped them when they were unconscious or in a comparable state, unable to perceive what was happening, speak or resist.
Some women recalled feeling uneasy afterward or experiencing dizziness and nausea, but they had no memory of sexual acts. They discovered what had happened only through the police investigation.
All 14 women testified with the public excluded to protect them. Some lawyers representing the women also requested audiovisual testimony, citing the risk of serious harm to their health from a direct encounter with the defendant. Six women participated as co-plaintiffs, according to ZDFheute.
At the trial's opening in early August, the defendant admitted the rapes in a statement delivered through Schöfthaler. He reportedly told a closed hearing that sexual thoughts had dominated his life and that he had been unable to satisfy his sexual needs without committing crimes.
A psychiatric expert, however, found no evidence that a possible sexual preference disorder had diminished or eliminated his ability to control his actions. The case files indicated that he acted in a controlled manner. During the period covered by the charges, he also had a relationship that his then-partner described as consensual and normal.
Recordings, searches and further allegations
Berlin investigators began examining the man after a tip from police in Verden an der Aller, Lower Saxony. He was allegedly in online contact with a man there who came under investigation in early 2025 on suspicion of sexually assaulting his wife.
The circumstances recall the case of Gisèle Pelicot in France, whose then-husband repeatedly drugged and abused her over nearly a decade and made her available to dozens of strangers to rape.
The Berlin defendant allegedly used the name "Zeppelin 70" in chats and asked how to drug women in order to assault them. An investigator described extreme dehumanization in the perpetrator chat groups he used, saying women were treated as goods to be traded.
Police searched his apartment in June 2025 and March 2026. An officer testified that they seized a very large number of data storage devices and found a bedroom camera fixed toward the bed that operated around the clock. Investigators also discovered meticulous records of recordings, along with sleeping pills, syringes and cannulas stored in boxes and suitcases.
The investigation extends beyond the women whose cases reached this trial. N-tv reported that suspected offenses involving another 44 women remain under investigation. Separately, tagesschau.de (rbb) and ZDFheute reported prosecutors' estimate that up to 59 women in total may have been victims.
International action against drug-facilitated sexual violence
The investigative program STRG_F documented international networks in which perpetrators share material and instructions. Two journalists used undercover profiles on public pornography sites to infiltrate rape networks. Over several years, they documented millions of views of rape videos and photographs, as well as the sharing of detailed instructions for drugging women and concealing the crimes.
Since April 2026, German and British criminal authorities have led an international effort against perpetrators of drug-facilitated sexual violence called "Operation Medusa," according to ZDFheute. Europol and the United States are among the participants. An initial operation identified 156 victims and perpetrators, leading to 113 investigations and 57 arrests.
Germany's proposed changes to drugging laws
The supplied reports on the Berlin case identify sedating substances but do not name the drugs used. Separately, German lawmakers have been considering changes concerning so-called K.o.-Tropfen, or knockout drops.
On October 8, 2024, the Federal Court of Justice ruled in case 5 StR 382/24 that secretly adding such substances to a drink does not amount to using a dangerous tool under Section 177(8), No. 1 of the Criminal Code. The five-year minimum sentence attached to that provision therefore does not apply. On May 23, 2025, the Bundesrat introduced a bill to add a provision covering the administration of poison or other harmful substances.
The federal cabinet approved a government bill on May 13, 2026, under which the use of knockout drops would be treated as a particularly serious form of sexual assault or robbery. In a separate regulatory change, an amendment to the New Psychoactive Substances Act that took effect on April 12, 2026, placed the industrial chemicals GBL and BDO under stricter controls.
A Bundestag document on the proposed legislation cites LeSuBiA, a representative German study of experiences that may not appear in official crime records. The study involved about 15,000 participants, with initial findings published in February 2026. It found that 6.7% of women and 3.7% of men had experienced involuntary administration of knockout drops during their lifetime. For the preceding five years, the figures were 1.8% and 0.7%, respectively.
The document also notes that the use of knockout drops is not separately defined as an offense in the Criminal Code and therefore cannot be separately recorded in police crime statistics. The planned legal change would require a corresponding update to the statistics' offense categories so these cases could be counted.
