The world was confronted by this form of internet-enabled abuse in 2024 during the mass rape and drugging trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men in southern France.
It was on a so-called dating website, in a chatroom called “Without Her Knowledge,” that Pelicot was able to connect with dozens of other men to instigate the rapes of his then-wife, Gisèle. While drugged unconscious by him, she was raped over 200 times by 70 men, not all of whom could be tracked down by police.
The Pelicot case briefly shone a spotlight on this dark corner of the internet. But while Coco, the website involved, was shut down and public attention moved elsewhere, this behavior did not disappear.
A monthslong CNN As Equals investigation has uncovered a hidden, online world where the commodification and amplification of sexual violence against women is flourishing.
One porn site, Motherless. com, is home to more than 20,000 videos of so-called “sleep” content uploaded by users, with hundreds of thousands of views.
The website, which had around 62 million visits in February alone and whose core audience is in the United States, describes itself as a “moral free file host where anything legal is hosted forever.”
The legality of some material posted is in serious doubt.