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Police in the Netherlands have said they have arrested four men during an investigation involving several women being drugged and sexually assaulted, with echoes of the Gisèle Pelicot case that shocked France.
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“Information indicates that multiple women in the Netherlands may have been drugged by someone in their immediate circle,” police said in a statement.
“Subsequently, sexual acts were performed on the victims while they were being filmed,” authorities added.
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 are trawling through evidence to determine how many victims were abused, according to the statement.
“But what is clear is that this is a case with an enormous impact,” said Milou van der Kolk from the Sexual Crimes Team of Rotterdam police.
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.
More arrests are possible, said police, who seized computers, telephones and data storage devices from the homes of the men arrested.
“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,” said van der Kolk.
In December 2024, Pelicot’s ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, and 50 other men were convicted of sexually assaulting her between 2011-2020, 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.
Additional sources • AP, AFP
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