A French court on Wednesday jailed a former police officer for 12 years for raping a woman who came to report domestic abuse.
The court found Jean-Pierre Dagos, 58, guilty of having twice raped the woman in 2023 in the town of Pontault-Combault, east of Paris, once after she came to file the complaint, and then a few days later after summoning her back to his office.
The defendant, in custody since 2023, admitted during his trial to having imposed oral sex act on her, but claimed he had no idea she had not consented.
The woman is from Angola and did not have residency papers. She told the court she had been terrified, believing the officer was armed and had the power to deport her and force her to leave behind her three French-born children.
An internal police investigator told the court on Monday that women had filed 176 complaints against law enforcement officers in 2023, of which 19 had amounted to at least inappropriate behaviour.
Under French law, rape is “any act of sexual penetration, of whatever nature, or any oral-genital act committed on another person through violence, coercion, threat or surprise”.
A revision to the law, passed in the wake of the Dominique Pelicot case, will amend the law to define rape as any non-consensual sexual act. Dominique Pelicot was jailed in 2025 after admitting to drugging his wife Gisèle and inviting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was unconscious.
