An Austrian woman died on June 25 after her husband allegedly drugged her repeatedly to allow other men to rape her for payment. Prosecutors have likened the case to the Gisele Pelicot trial in France, as the husband and a neighbor now face charges related to the woman’s fatal injuries.
Emergency services were called to a home in Marchtrenk, Austria, where a 39-year-old woman was found lifeless and covered in blood on a waterbed. She was discovered by her teenage daughter. The woman’s 51-year-old husband, who was intoxicated at the time, initially claimed to first responders that his wife had suffered an accident during rough sex
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Evidence from the Marchtrenk Investigation
While police did not initially suspect the husband, an autopsy and a forensic search of his mobile phone uncovered a different narrative. Following the incident, the husband disposed of the waterbed and deleted an application from his phone.
Police allege the man drugged his wife over an extended period and handed her over to men while she was unconscious. Local media reports indicate the husband was paid up to 500 Euros per session. In text messages, he reportedly referred to his wife as dead meat
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The investigation led to the arrest of the husband and a neighbor. The neighbor is accused of sexually assaulting the woman twice, including on the night she died, though he is believed to have left the house before her death. Text messages between the two men detailed the abuse; in one exchange, the husband told the neighbor, I’ll get her properly drunk. Then you can have sex with her again.
The neighbor responded by thanking the husband for allowing me to use her
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Parallels to the Gisele Pelicot Case
Prosecutors have branded the Austrian case Pelicot 2.0
, drawing a direct comparison to a high-profile trial in France. In that case, Dominique Pelicot admitted to drugging his wife, Gisele, for nearly a decade to facilitate her rape by dozens of strangers.
The French case, which drew international attention in 2024, involved a husband who recruited men via the internet and filmed the assaults in their home. Dominique Pelicot, 71, eventually confessed in court, stating, I am a rapist like all the others in this room
. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum possible penalty, while 50 co-defendants were also found guilty of various charges.
The Austrian case mirrors these patterns of betrayal and sedation. In both instances, the perpetrators used the trust of a marital relationship to administer drugs—sleeping pills or alcohol—to remove the victim’s ability to consent. The Austrian husband explicitly acknowledged the lack of consent in messages, writing, She’s not participating willingly
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The Pattern of Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault
The use of medication to overpower partners is a recurring theme in these crimes. In a separate case from Devon, a woman named Zoe Watts described how her ex-husband crushed sleeping pills into her tea for years to rape and film her. Her ex-husband was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022 for crimes spanning 2011 to 2016.
Watts and another survivor, Amanda Stanhope, have since campaigned against the distribution of materials depicting unconscious women being abused. Watts highlighted the psychological disorientation of these attacks, noting that when she would occasionally wake up, she would immediately turn to the person she loved and trusted, unaware that they were the perpetrator.
Legal Stakes and Ongoing Investigations
In the Marchtrenk case, the investigation remains active as police search for more suspects. The evidence gathered from the husband’s phone—specifically the search history regarding sedation and the explicit texts to the neighbor—shifts the case from an accidental death to a calculated series of crimes.
The legal implications for the suspects are severe, as the injuries sustained during the sexual abuse were determined to be fatal. This elevates the charges beyond sexual assault to those involving death resulting from criminal activity.
These cases collectively illustrate a specific form of domestic violence where the home is converted into a site of organized abuse. Whether in the Provence town of Mazan or the town of Marchtrenk, the method remains the same: the use of chemical restraints to eliminate consent and the subsequent exploitation of the victim for payment or personal gratification.
