A German man has been found guilty of drugging and raping his unconscious wife for years and sharing video of his crimes on the internet, in a case that has drawn comparisons to the trial of Dominique Pelicot in France.
Fernando P., a 61-year-old school janitor, was found guilty of abusing his wife inside the couple’s home, filming it and then sharing it online without the victim’s knowledge.
He was sentenced Friday to 8 years and 6 months in prison following a trial at a court in Aachen, western Germany. An appeal may be filed against the judgment within one week, the court said.
Note, Germany’s current chancellor voted against the law making rape in marriage illegal.
Wow, and I hadn’t heard about it until now. You’d think another Pelicot would be big news.
Do they have laws against publicising these things before conviction, maybe?
Yes. Even after conviction they may only name the culprit in exceptional cases. It’s mostly for the victim’s benefit, but even criminals have a right to privacy.
Short sentence if you ask me.
There’s a fair argument for a longer sentence for such a horrible crime, but for Germany this is pretty long, prison sentences are not as inflated there as in the USA.
And you really don’t want to start inching towards American sentence lengths
24 life sentences for forgetting I had a case of water under the cart? One life sentence per bottle. You got away with the packaging. They didn’t even make it into my car!
Hang your Christmas lights wrong? That’s a hanging.
“in America, we fight for freedom and liberty!”
It is pretty long by European standards. At the same time, it does feel unjust when the culprit gets a shorter sentence than he gave his victim.
My understanding of how most of Europe handles incarceration is that: instead of giving really long sentences, but allowing parole after x years like in the US, they give shorter sentences, and then they do a (yearly maybe?) review when the sentence is up to determine if the inmate has been rehabilitated enough to re-enter society.
So a 5 year sentence in Europe can end up being longer in practice if they determine the person isn’t fit to leave.
Does Germany have a sex offender registry? If so, the social sentence may continue well after release. While not quite the same, hopefully she can begin healing and move on with her life while his torment just begins.
The opposite, you have a right to privacy even after being sentenced. Such a registry sounds like it would drastically increase recidivism rates by making you unemployable and unable to form a social life.
It does. Signed, US Citizen.
I agree, six words is short.
Please don’t confuse this as victim blaming. It is not. I am curious about what the victim thought was going on with her health when she was being frequently sedated. Did she think she became a hard sleeper? Did she have side effects that she might have even seen a doctor for, who spent futile time testing for natural causes?
Is this something that might one day be in the back of mind for nurses and doctors that someone is being secretly drugged, like Munchausen by Proxy?
Gisèle Pelicot (a parallel case in France) was very public with her story, I imagine you can look for answers there.
Thanks. Another commenter added some context.
The french lady said she was dizzy and prone to fainting if I remember correctly. She went to see a doctor couple of times but they didn’t find anything.
That’s exactly what I was curious about. There’d be no reason to do toxicology for someone coming in with these sorts of symptoms. Foul play is often the last thing people suspect.
I don’t know about this specific case, but what I do know is that often in cases of abuse there is a certain amount of Gaslighting involved. And even if there is no Gaslighting, the absurdity and horror of it all can lead to victims not wanting to believe what is going on.
Not sure why they had to add “west Germany”. I think we only have one Aachen? (Unlike Frankfurt…)
CNN is an American news company. I assume they added “western Germany” because most Americans don’t know where Aachen is.
Or Germany 🙃
Or Europe, or find USA on a globe.
on globe is easy. usa is in the center
