An international police operation spanning seven countries has uncovered highly organized networks of offenders who drug and rape their partners and use online chat groups to aid and encourage their “horrifying” assaults, authorities said on Thursday.

In most cases, the victims are women who are sedated before being raped and sexually assaulted, Europol and Britian’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said. The online groups provide a haven for predominantly male perpetrators to coordinate assaults, share information as well as post videos and photos of the abuse, they said.

German and British crime agencies, with the help of law enforcement from the United States, Brazil, Canada, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Spain, have launched a joint operation to tackle the “evolving threat,” Britian’s NCA said in a statement Thursday.

Often, the victims have no idea they have been sexually assaulted until they are contacted by police, and the abuse is committed by “someone they know and trust, and in some cases by multiple connected offenders,” the agency said.

The investigations come after the high-profile case of Gisele Pelicot in France, whose husband solicited dozens of strangers to rape her while she was unconscious, in a case that shocked the world and sparked a cultural reckoning on gender-based violence and misogyny in the country.

It also follows an undercover investigation by CNN into online networks of men teaching others how to drug and rape their partners.

Since launching the cross-border police collaboration, dubbed Project Medusa, in April, European investigators say they have identified more than 150 offenders and victims, and opened more than 270 new leads.

Fifty-seven people have been arrested, they said.

But the true scale of these crimes and number of victims is unknown and “almost certainly underreported,” according to Britain’s NCA.

“Drug-facilitated sexual assault is no longer isolated behaviour, but increasingly organized, conducted via coordinated networks and enabled by digital platforms, requiring a more sophisticated operational response,” said Nigel Leary, deputy director at the NCA.

‘The most horrifying I have seen’

Perpetrators seek to “objectify and dehumanise” their victims and in some cases the abuse takes place over decades, said Europol, which is coordinating the operation.

“They use encrypted messaging services, forums, and closed chat groups to exchange experiences, normalize abusive behaviour, facilitate the illegal trade in prescription medications and narcotics, and coordinate criminal acts,” it added.

In these online groups, offenders share information about which drugs to use, how to administer them, how to avoid detection, and request and share videos and photos of the abuse.

Siobhan Blake, the rape and serious sexual offences lead for the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, said the abuse “is some of the most horrifying I have seen in my career.”

“Victims are being subject to horrendous sexual offending in their own homes in an ultimate breach of trust,” she said.

Police warn that victims can be any age, social background or ability, and have encouraged anyone who suspects they have been a victim of drug-facilitated sexual assault to come forward.

Across Europe there have been several arrests and convictions in recent years of men who have been accused or found guilty of drugging and raping their unconscious partners.

Dominique Pelicot was handed a 20-year prison sentence in 2024 for organizing the drugging and rape of his then-wife Gisèle. Fifty others were also convicted.

Last year, German national Fernando P. was found guilty of drugging and raping his unconscious wife for years and sharing video of his crimes online, and sentenced to 8 years and 6 months in prison.

Also in 2025, Zhenhao Zou was convicted of raping 10 women in the UK and China and jailed for life with a minimum term of 24 years. Police and prosecutors said Zou contacted students of Chinese heritage on WeChat and dating apps, and lured them to his apartments to drug and assault them.

And in April, Polish authorities arrested a man in connection with an alleged rape. Polish media outlets identified the man arrested as “Piotr,” the pseudonym given to the Polish man at the center of CNN’s investigation and who was one of nearly 1,000 users in a private Telegram group dedicated to sharing advice on the drugging and rape of partners.

But experts have told CNN that offenders of drug-facilitated sexual assault continue to evolve how they carry out the abuse, making it harder for such cases to make their way to trial. There is also limited reliable data as to how widespread these types of crimes are, and survivors have called for regulators to take more proactive action to take down online platforms and websites that host exploitative material.

The police operation is the “first of-its-kind,” according to Europol, and those involved say they hope that by joining forces, law enforcement across multiple countries can bring out into the open a type of abuse that “thrives in secrecy online and behind closed doors,” Blake said. (CNN)

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