'Le violeur de Tinder' miniseries gives voice to 13 victims of Samuel Moderie's crimes

Samuel Moderie drugged at least 13 women he met on dating apps, assaulted them while they were defenceless, and left them to wake confused with holes in their memory. In February 2023, he was arrested. A court convicted him and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Now, a three-part documentary miniseries on Crave is telling what happened—and it puts the women at the centre.

"Le violeur de Tinder," co-directed and co-written by Vanessa Boisset and Guillaume Gauthier, airs starting Wednesday. The title names the criminal. The series names his victims and gives them the bulk of the screen time.

The women describe the seduction playbook Moderie used: he was charming, capable of braving a snowstorm for a date, capable of seeming normal except for the fact that he was direct when talking about sex. Under that mask was a different man—one who drugged them without consent and committed unspeakable acts while they were unconscious.

One woman woke to find the word "salope" (slut) written across her abdomen. Another realized too late she'd been drugged but had no memory of what was done to her. More than one lost consciousness for over 24 hours without understanding why, without knowing what had happened to her body.

Boisset was drawn to the story partly by its proximity to her own life. "When I found out about the affair, I told myself that it could have been me. It could have been any woman, really," she said. She read about Moderie's crimes while also following coverage of Gisèle Pelicot's assault in France—a reminder that this kind of violence is not confined to anywhere else. It happens here.

The documentary's goal, Boisset said, is to "give power back to the women who were victimized by this man and to alert other women." Journalist Tristan Péloquin, interviewed in the series, followed the case closely. "I wanted to understand how this guy operated, to make his modus operandi public, to protect other women and maybe so that other victims would recognize themselves," he said. During his reporting, he discovered someone he contacted had actually been one of Moderie's victims—a moment he calls one of the hardest of his career.