Have men always gang-raped unconscious married women?

[Waheymum]

Since the Gisele Pelicot trial, I've noticed multiple similar cases in the news. Has this always happened and I've just never known about it? Also, I don't understand why anyone would enjoy sex with an unconscious person, surely it's the same as using a blow-up doll? Is it a paraphilia, does it have a name?

Sadly it seems quite common. There was a video on a Dr Delony show where this poor woman just had surgery and was home recuperating. Her fiancé double dosed her sleeping/pain medication (he said it was an accident) and she woke up to him orally SA’ing her.

But what was more alarming were the comments with numerous women saying that similar happened to them. Trusted partners taking advantage of them when they were either sleeping or knocked out on meds.

It seems like a lot of these men had never raised a flag about this type of behaviour and otherwise had healthy relationships.

That has made me feel physically sick.

I'm sure it's always gone in some capacity. But certain modern conditions have probably made it more prevalent - access to reliable-strength drugs and the internet primarily.

I also think some other forms of rape have become less accessible. Wives more willing to leave abusive husbands than they were in the past, police hotter than they used to be on sexual exploitation and grooming, forensics and cctv making it riskier to drag a stranger off the street or out of the club. While those things of course still go on, someone with a bit of sense who gets off on abusing women may have found this method more appealing since it was until recently basically unrecognised (grim thought sorry).

I think the internet has changed several things.

It's made porn more accessible, even to children.

It's made it easier for perverted men to find others like them and form online communities where sick behaviour gets normalised and crimes can be planned.

In some ways, it's made it easier to catch them, because there's a trail of evidence online. So they get into the news.

Anonymous posting has made people more uninhibited than in real life, so it's lifted the lid on the nature of a lot of men's inner lives, even when individual identities aren't known.

I thi k there have always been mfn who will do this to an unconscious woman given the chance. They probably don't really care if she's married or not inost casss.

In the cases you are talking about I think the husband's typically have a paraphilia. The other men I would think have a variety of motivations.

You're right. Blotto from alcohol is definitely not new.

Good points. I forgot that it had made its way to the Greeks and Romans ages ago.

There was that 24 hours in police custody episode about the nightclub rapist or whatever it was called. It was absolutely shocking and the fact they used his real cctv footage made it even more disturbing.

There has been a dedicated unit/initiative investigating it on the net. Hence all the concurrent trials/cases.

But yes, I think we should assume that as long as there have been ways to abuse women, men have made use of them, Im afraid.

https://safeline.org.uk/news/organised-drug-facilitated-sexual-assault-networks-uncovered/

This is UK, but there is international co ordination.

'Growing Evidence of Organised Networks

Since October 2025, NCA investigators have identified more than 270 individuals linked to a specific online forum and related successor groups.
More than 210 intelligence packages concerning suspects, perpetrators and potential victims have been shared with law enforcement agencies in the UK and overseas, leading to at least 14 separate investigations.

Last week, the NCA also hosted investigators from Brazil, Canada, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain, the United States and Europol at its headquarters in London as part of Project Medusa, an international initiative launched in April 2026.

The collaboration resulted in:

More than 150 offenders and victims being identified
Over 270 new international investigations being launched
Four previously unknown online communities being uncovered

Authorities believe the true scale of offending is likely to be significantly greater, as many cases remain hidden and underreported'

Here is an example in a Mennonite community in Bolivia. They used the ghas they used to kill cattle to drug women and rape them. It was only in 2009 but the gas has been used for a long time on animals, we have had the ability to knock people out unconscious for a long time.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-48265703

I read a 19th century local newspaper account of a woman whose husband drugged her with laudanum (tincture of opium in alcohol, available in any pharmacy) and encouraged his male servants to rape her. The wife was richer than he was, her friends were told she was unwell. I can't remember how the truth came out, or even whether she survived.

I am aware this risks sounding like victim blaming, so please know it is not intended that way.

I find it so hard to believe women wouldn't know something was up? I know Gisele Pelicot had had real concerns about her health and memory etc and had seen doctors about it, but this hasn't been mentioned in the other cases.

If they genuinely had no signs or symptoms this was happening, for years, then essentially there could be so many more women this is happening to with no clues at all.

Just because media reports don't include it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Also, in a coercive controlling relationship a woman may be very confused and destabilised. She may well think things are wrong, but may also have been deliberately gaslit and effectively brainwashed into looking for issues with herself, rather than in her relationship.

Gynae issues, memory issues, fatigue, are not exactly uncommon.

Men will rape anything. Babies, corpses, animals. Why not unconscious women?

When it comes to men and sex, nothing surprises me. Men have consistently disappointed me, and it has almost always involved sex. Often, men I liked and respected turn out to have done awful things. And they will defend other men who do as well.

One random example. I remember a guy at work I respected angrily defending the right of landlords to offer sex for rent (I live in a university town, and there was scandal a few years back of these vile, grubby men who owned grotty little flats offering a sex for rent arrangement with young students). It ended with me angrily yelling at him "what if it was your 18-year-old daughter, and she was up to her eyes in student debt, and some vile, fat, sweaty middle-aged guy took advantage?!"

Multiple cases of wives being drugged by their husbands show that the women know something is wrong - but they don't know what, and obviously the last thing they suspect is that their husband is drugging them.
Helen Bailey was murdered by her fiance, he had been drugging her food for months. She had a google search history of things like "feeling fatigued all the time."
Malcolm Webster drugged & murdered his first wife - she had been trying to seek medical help, and he had discouraged her. He tried to murder his second wife too, and even drugged her on their honeymoon and while she was pregnant - she had medical tests as to why she was sleeping so much, and they found liver abnormalities from the sedatives he was giving her.
It seems women must be vigilant even in their most intimate and trusted relationships - with their husbands.

The fact that it's in the news is the least depressing part. Finally something is being done. Of course it's always happened. You think all the (economically) poor drugged up women in the glamorised orgies in programmes like Bridgerton would have been consenting?

https://www.europol.europa.eu/how-we-work/operations/project-medusa

'Project MEDUSA is a collaborative effort aiming to combat drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) in intimate-partner settings, particularly in the context of online communities. This project is led by Germany and the United Kingdom.'

Partners: Austria,* *Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States.

I struggle to articulate an appropriate response to this. Maybe we should have dating agencies where men have to have three recommendations from women to join.

The other contributing factor is likely to be mobility - easy to drive half an hour for an assault. Also who lives next door to a load of women they have known all their lives who would look out for red flags? And stand up and shout about it?

But what’s most shocking is that this to a long term partner / wife. It’s a crime that needs a relationship of trust. So truly grim.

I think there’s just greater awareness now.

I also think that once a story like this hits the mainstream media, more investigative journalists will start digging in those directions hence why that Telegram channel got infiltrated.