In the grim wake of the Pelicot case, CNN has, after a months-long investigation, uncovered last March a global digital ecosystem in which the amplification and commodification of sexual violence against women are thriving.
The sinister website Coco, which enabled Dominique Pelicot to drug, rape, and orchestrate the rape of his wife, may have been shut down, but similar digital spaces are flourishing everywhere – whether pornographic websites, forums, or private Telegram discussion groups – and their themes remain the same: filming sexual assaults on unconscious women, sharing videos of the assaults, and exchanging advice on how to drug and rape women without arousing suspicion.
The website Motherless hosts for instance more than 20,000 so-called “sleep” videos uploaded by users, categorized under hashtags such as #passedout or #eyecheck (checking the eyes to verify that women are indeed unconscious). In these videos, men film themselves lifting the eyelids of women to show that they are asleep or sedated, while members exchange advice on how to drug their partners.
The site, whose users are primarily based in the US, recorded approximately 62 million visits in February 2026 alone.
A visit, however, does not correspond to a unique person: one individual may view the same page multiple times, with each view counted separately. We are therefore not talking about 62 million people.
Furthermore, Motherless offers more than one hundred categories of pornographic videos (“blonde,” “webcam,” and countless others) in which women are conscious.
Finally, among those 62 million visits are bots – automated traffic with no human behind it. Pornographic websites tend to have more bots than average, and it is estimated that between 30% and 60% of traffic may be non-human. This leaves an estimated human traffic ranging between 25 and 43 million visits. Since visits are not people, and because users of pornographic websites generally make between three and ten visits per month, this leaves us with an estimated range of between 2.5 million and 14 million people who may have viewed this kind of content.
Even if I take the lower estimate of 2.5 million people, the number is staggering. This is a mass audience consuming pornographic content in which women are – as we know – rarely portrayed in proactive roles, and are instead most often subjected to violent and masochistic fantasies, when they are not, in the case of the “sleep” category, unconscious because they have been drugged.
I think CNN’s report represents only a small part of a much larger international rape network, previously exposed by my colleagues Isabell Beer and Isabel Ströh.”
Lutz Ackermann, German journalist and editor-in-chief of Panorama – Die Reporter for the documentary series STRG_F (known for infiltrating digital communities), which, together with fellow reporters, uncovered dozens of Telegram groups with up to 70,000 members as well as rape videos reaching millions of views. Their investigation sparked political debate in Germany.
Like the Pelicot case, the facts revealed by CNN’s investigation expose systemic problems – that is, problems that are not isolated incidents, but whose scale reveals a broader system of thought and action, enabled and at times implicitly encouraged by that very system. A systemic problem is the opposite of an isolated mere news item: its repetition and recurrence make it a societal issue.
In truth, we are dealing with several societal issues at once. We are talking about a normalized and shameless rape culture sustained through male camaraderie exchanging advice and experiences (on how to drug women and avoid suspicion), the economic exploitation of women’s bodies, and the monetization of rape itself — since some videos depicting drug-facilitated rape required cryptocurrency payments of $20 to watch.
These rapes are vastly underreported, for obvious reasons: sedative substances disappear quickly, victims often bear no visible physical injuries, and may not even realize they have been raped – and indeed, how could they imagine it, when the perpetrator is… their partner.
I’ve had people say: ‘Yeah, but he’s your husband,’ or ‘but you weren’t awake.’ ‘So… it’s not the same as being dragged down an alleyway, is it?’”
One survivor, whose ex-husband is serving an eleven-year prison sentence for rape, sexual assault by penetration, and drugging.
I see everyone as a potential predator. It took away my innocence toward other people.”
Another rape survivor, whose former partner was charged with rape and sexual assault but took his own life before the case went to trial.
“Not all men” – yes, but always a man. Because statistically, this is a tangible reality (already explained in Lucie Peytavin’s essay): 99% of rapes in France are committed by men, 93.5% in the US, 97% in Canada, 98% in Sweden, 97% in Germany, 95% in South Africa, and 98% in Japan. Meanwhile, 2023 UN/WHO statistics estimate that one in three women worldwide – approximately 840 million women – experiences physical and/or sexual violence, with the most common form being violence committed by an intimate partner (current or former), overwhelmingly male.
Spare me the remaining 1% to 6.5%: of course men can be victims of sexual violence committed by women, and there is undoubtedly significant underreporting of such violence as I write this piece. Nevertheless, the staggering statistics presented above demonstrate that, as of today, sexual violence committed by men is systemic in nature.
The Pelicot case and the facts uncovered by CNN’s investigation are merely the tragic reflections of a deeply entrenched rape culture.
Editor’s note. If we set sexual violence aside, do some women emphasize their physical appearance and sexuality in order to obtain advantages – small or large – granted by men? Yes, of course. This is what I call transactional patriarchy. Some men I recently had occasion to speak with were offended that this was not about “all men,” while simultaneously complaining about the deception they sometimes experience from women who bargain with their physical attributes. Some buy drinks for women in nightclubs and feel frustrated when the transaction does not lead anywhere – that is, when no sexual favor is granted in return. In doing so, they inadvertently admit that a woman’s sexuality is at a man’s disposal and can become the object of a transaction. They inadvertently admit the desire to purchase a consensual sexual favor – when in reality, this is merely one of the countless variations of the game of seduction, with all the risks of failure that it entails. We can blame the system and spare the players, but the truth is that the system will only change if all the players – men and women – change their mindset. The truth is that rape culture begins here: with the idea that a cheap ten-dollar drink should or could grant access to the female body. Let’s go get some fresh air in Kensington Gardens in London.
May 22, 2026
