Salim Berrada, the "Tinder" rapist, before the French justice

Salim Berrada, 38, is on trial for the rapes of 13 women and the sexual assaults of four others committed between 2014 and 2016 at the departmental criminal court in Paris. According to the indictment order consulted by franceinfo, the accused is suspected of having set up a "perverse" system to attract his victims. He is accused of having posed as a fashion photographer to meet women online, and of having applied an almost identical modus operandi, in a "form of industrialization". Ashley*, an American student, filed a complaint against Salim in April 2015, Élise* in February 2016, and two other victims did so in May and October 2016. They all accuse him of rape.

In October 2017, Salim was arrested and then placed in custody. The opening of a judicial investigation will follow. During his hearing before the investigating judge, he does not acknowledge the truthfulness of the statements of the women who filed a complaint. He claims to have had consensual sexual relations with the plaintiffs and denies having introduced any medicinal substance into their glasses. "In two or three years, he met between 200 and 300 girls, maybe even more, and there were only four girls who reacted this way," the indictment specifies. I have "a need for sex every two days, and to change partners all the time," the accused claims.

The public denunciation of Salim’s actions in Facebook and Instagram posts by two four victims in 2016 encourages other women - young women, sometimes minors - to file complaints against the thirty-year-old. According to the toxicological analyses, there are traces of chemical products corresponding to the period of the facts in more than half of the plaintiffs. "It was either MDMA, or over-the-counter antihistamine molecules, or a sedative and an anxiolytic for one of them," the judges specify in their indictment. The psychiatric assessments carried out on Salim Berrada incriminate the accused. If the first one concludes to a "narcissistic" personality with a "manipulative tendency that can evoke a perverse type of functioning", the second assessment establishes an egocentric profile, "without any regard for the seduced and immediately abandoned women".

Placed in pre-trial detention in October 2016, he is released from prison under judicial supervision in 2019, pending his trial. But he resumes his "activity" on dating apps. In June 2023, Rania* filed a complaint against Salim for aggravated rape. Her testimony and that of several other victims prompt the Paris prosecutor’s office to order new investigations for acts that may have been committed between 2021 and 2023, as well as in 2013. July 13, 2023: opening of a new judicial investigation. The thirty-year-old will be arrested, placed in custody, then indicted for "rapes with administration of a substance to the victim, without her knowledge, to impair her discernment or control of her acts". He is again placed in pre-trial detention.

*Modified first names