By Kotie Geldenhuys
Photos/images courtesy of Pexels and Unsplash
Imagine the person you trust most betraying you in the worst possible way – drugging you, then inviting strangers to abuse you while you lie unconscious. This was the reality for 72-year-old Gisèle Pélicot. In 2024, her decade-long nightmare stunned the world. Drugged into unconsciousness by her own husband, strangers repeatedly raped her, an ordeal she described in chilling detail during the trial of 51 men, including Dominique, her husband of 50 years. He admitted to police that he had taken pleasure in watching other men abuse his wife while she slept (Schofield, 2024). Shockingly, similar patterns of abuse are now surfacing in South Africa.
On 26 March 2026, two men were arrested in Gauteng in a targeted SAPS crackdown on drug-facilitated sexual abuse and child sexual abuse material. The arrests followed a tip-off from the National Crime Agency (NCA) at the British High Commission in Cape Town, which flagged a South African suspect to the police’s Serial and Electronic Crime Investigations (SECI) Unit. Investigators allege the 34-year-old man drugged and raped his wife, recording and sharing the abuse online over five years, while she was unconscious or heavily sedated.
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[This is only an extract of an article published in Servamus: June 2026. This article is available for purchase.]