Exposing a global ‘rape academy’

This story is the final part of CNN's As Equals series on gender inequality. For information about how the series was funded and more, check out our FAQs.

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. 

So-called “sleep” content is categorized using descriptive tags such as #passedout and #eyecheck.

In these videos, men film themselves lifting the closed eyelids of women to show they are sleeping or sedated, with some “eyecheck” videos surpassing 50,000 views. Inside the Motherless “sleep” community – first reported on by German investigative journalists Isabell Beer and Isabel Ströh – members trade advice on how to drug their partners.  

On the “Zzz” chat group, which a Motherless user had linked to and where we first met Piotr, they do the same. CNN is not providing the names and doses of the specific medicines the users said they employ.

One Motherless user claimed to be running a business selling and dispatching “sleeping liquids” to any address in the world. The man, who said he was based in Ceuta, a tiny Spanish exclave on the North African coast, said on his Telegram account that it would cost 150 euros (approximately $175) for a bottle of the liquid that he said was tasteless and odorless. “Your wife won’t feel anything and won’t remember anything,” he said.

While the platforms vary, inside such groups, video is king. Some users advertised livestreams, showing the abuse of drugged women in real time, for $20 per viewer, with cryptocurrency the preferred means of payment.   

Another user, who said he was based in West Africa, shared a clip from a previous livestream he said he'd done to entice us to his next. In it, a woman – who he said was his sleeping wife – could be heard snoring as he climbs on top of her. Then the clip ends.  

In Poland, the woman Piotr said was his wife also appears to be unaware of what is happening to her.  

Men in these groups operate shielded by the anonymity of the internet. But they also find a sense of community and perverse camaraderie, as they normalize abuse. For months, Piotr spoke openly with us and even shared what he said was his address.  

But when it came to meeting face-to-face, he resisted. We wanted to confirm he was who he said he was, so we travelled to his hometown in Poland.  

CNN found Piotr and his wife at a local restaurant.  

Uncertain how he might react – and unwilling to put her in danger – we chose not to confront him, instead reaching out to police about our findings.

Piotr is just one actor in a vast, global network – his wife likely among many unaware victims.   

But some survivors know.

‘But he’s your husband’

When Zoe Watts learned that her husband of 16 years had been crushing her son’s sleeping medicine into her tea and raping her while she was passed out, it shattered her world.  

“We worry about who’s coming behind us, walking down the street, or who’s even friending us on Facebook. You know, we worry about going to our car late at night in a car park, but we don't worry about who you lie next to. I didn't realize I had to,” Watts said.  

Her then husband's confession came on an otherwise ordinary Sunday in 2018, after the couple – who share four children – had returned from church.  

“He reeled off a list of his wrongdoings... as if it was, you know, a shopping list,” Watts said, speaking to CNN at her house in Devon, England.    

He told her the abuse had been going on for years.  

“He just sort of said... ‘I've been using our son's sleeping medication to put in your last cup of tea at night, to tie you down, take photographs and rape you.’”  

The admission left Watts questioning all their intimate moments.  

“At the end of a very busy day… I was just grateful I had a cup of tea before I went to bed, because I was so tired and didn't have to make it,” she said, adding: “You don't expect anything other than innocence to come from your partner.”  

“You don't expect anything other than innocence to come from your partner.”

Click here for Zoe’s story

Concerned about her children and still grappling with what had happened to her, she initially kept it a secret. The internal struggle eventually took a toll on her health.  

After a serious panic attack, Watts told her sister. Then their mother called the police. While she believes pressing charges was the right decision, at the time, it was agonizing. A four-year legal process saw her children become targets for bullying at school, and left her social network all but destroyed.  

Watts said one of the many difficult aspects of her ordeal has been confronting people’s assumptions about abuse within a marriage, even though she recognizes that they are rooted in misinformation and unconscious bias.

“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 taken down an alleyway, is it?’”  

Her ex-husband is serving an 11-year sentence for rape, sexual assault by penetration and drugging.  

Watts still struggles to use the word rape to describe what happened to her. It is too painful.

“There's a shame and a guilt that comes with it, that, ‘Oh, maybe I should have known, or I can't believe I didn't realize. Why didn't I connect those dots?’ she said.

‘He was trying to change my reality’

That enduring stigma is exactly what Gisèle Pelicot has sought to challenge on the international stage, telling the world at her former husband’s trial that “shame must change sides.”  

In the town of Wigan, northwest England, Amanda Stanhope – who too, was raped by her ex-partner – said Gisele’s strength inspired her to speak out.    

“She broke the silence and shame... if she can do it, then so can I,” Stanhope said.   

She now posts videos on social media to spread awareness about this type of abuse, encouraging women to trust their instincts.  

Over a five-year period, Stanhope said she would often fall asleep without remembering how, and would wake up to bruises on her body and in different clothes, with a towel under her, without any memory as to why.   

After waking up a few times to her partner violently raping her, Stanhope knew something was wrong and asked him to stop. Instead, Stanhope said, she was gaslit.   

“He would then turn on me and say, ‘well, you're on too much medication. You must be imagining it. That didn't happen. You're mental. You're crazy,’” she said.   

“So even though I felt 100% sure that something had happened... he was trying to change my reality, (saying) that it hadn't happened, even though the physical signs were there.”  

With the support of her brother, Stanhope eventually went to the police.  

Her former partner was charged with rape and sexual assault. He took his own life before the case went to court.  

Sharing her story is part of Stanhope’s healing process. But the trauma has unequivocally changed her outlook.   

“I see everyone as a potential predator,” Stanhope said, adding: “It took my innocence for people away.”  

“You need to find something bigger than the pain, otherwise you drown in the pain.”

Click here for Amanda’s story

Survivor Valentina – a mother of two who lives in northern Italy and who asked CNN not to use her real name – said she, too, has a hard time trusting anyone.  

“I can’t conceive of the fact that a woman could be treated like slaughterhouse meat. Because in the end, that’s what I was,” Valentina said, reflecting on the horror of discovering videos that her husband of 20 years had filmed – showing him abusing her after he had drugged her with alcohol and sedatives. 

“I was lucky to find the videos because truly it would have been a bit... difficult to believe, because I had no marks," she added.  

Valentina doesn’t remember the abuse. But it left psychological scars. 

“No matter how much you try to brush it off, it's always right there beside you – the experience you've had,” she said, adding that “it just takes a bed, a camera, a different scent” to trigger her. 

She is seeing a psychologist to help her move through the trauma. But it still feels fresh.  

“As much as I might be happy, smiling, on the outside, then I come home. I still have to deal... make friends with my nightmares, which are always just behind the door,” she said.   

In 2021, Valentina’s former husband was sentenced to eight years in prison for multiple aggravated sexual assaults.   

Years later, she is still struggling to understand his motivation.   

Like Dominique Pelicot and Piotr, Valentina said her husband was spending lots of time online, possibly seeking a self-education in rape. 

“I was branded for life with a hot iron.”

Click here for Valentina’s story

Some forms of pornography have long normalized violence against women as entertainment, with algorithms that favor extreme content further pushing exploitative material into the mainstream, experts say. 

Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Britain’s Durham University and an expert on violence against women and girls, told CNN that the growing presence of voyeuristic material on mainstream porn sites “glorifies” abusive behaviors both on and offline. It’s a problem that “many men and many people in society aren't taking seriously enough,” she said. 

For users within the online “sleep porn” community, the thrill of the abuse is not only in the act itself but in the collective dynamic surrounding it, said Annabelle Montagne, a psychologist who assessed half of the men convicted in the Pelicot trial, including Dominique, who organized the crimes.  

“Within these sites, there is also this notion of, almost, brotherhood,” she said, adding that participants find themselves “creating bonds” that meet and reinforce their “narcissistic” needs.   

Sandrine Josso, a French lawmaker who, after being drugged by a former French senator, has campaigned to raise awareness about drug-facilitated sexual abuse (DFSA), called the groups “schools of violence.”  

“I would even call them an online rape academy, where every subject is taught. There are all the ‘subjects’ and ‘disciplines’ needed to become a good rapist or sexual predator,” she said.   

Meanwhile, the landscape of drug-facilitated assault is continuing to evolve, with perpetrators pivoting to more "readily available" prescription medicines that act quickly and leave little trace in the body compared to the “date rape” drugs of the past, making it harder for such cases to make their way to trial, US-based sleep specialist Michel Cramer Bornemann told CNN.

It’s difficult to know how widespread drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) is, as reliable data is limited.  

Across Europe, most criminal justice systems either lack specific monitoring systems for DFSA or do not include it as a separate category in official crime statistics, meaning there’s no fully comparable Europe‑wide dataset on such assaults.   

“This is a topic where reliable, specific data is ‘scarce by design,’” a World Health Organization spokesperson told CNN, adding that there are no accurate estimates of this type of abuse due to how underreported it is.   

“Many go unreported because victims feel embarrassment, guilt, or perceived responsibility, or because they have limited memory of the assault,” the spokesperson said.  

Low reporting is further compounded by a lack of training for both hospital staff and police in recognizing victims of DFSA, experts say.  

In England and Wales – the jurisdiction in which survivors Watts and Stanhope live – 43% of recorded sexual assaults involved a partner or ex-partner, according to March 2025 data, marking a minor decrease from 45% five years ago. The proportion of victims recorded as having been assaulted while unconscious or asleep has risen to 23% from 21% over the last decade.  

Conviction rates for sexual offenses across Europe – as in the US – remain low. 

This comes as no surprise to Stanhope. 

She says she was shocked by the initial police response to a video that showed her former partner sexually assaulting her while she was unconscious.    

“I thought, there's the evidence. And the police said to me, ‘Well, we can't use that, that isn't clear evidence, because it looks like you're pretending to be asleep.’” Survivor Amanda Stanhope

Police eventually charged Stanhope’s former partner. But her experience underscores why victims of domestic abuse often do not report these crimes.   

In the Pelicot trial, a defense used by several of Gisele's rapists was that they believed it was a part of a consensual "sex game.” 

Watts told CNN that her former partner presented a similar explanation.  

“He said he thought I wanted me to find myself waking up with him having sex with me, like I'd asked for it,” she said.  

McGlynn, the law professor, told CNN that while the law – at least in the UK – is generally well equipped to cover the range of criminal offenses committed by men who drug and rape their partners, the global online phenomenon persists because of a reluctance from governments to go after what she sees as the heart of the problem: the online platforms themselves.

During the course of CNN's investigation, the “Zzz” group was taken off the messaging platform Telegram. Telegram did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

And while the website used by the rapists in the Pelicot case, Coco, was taken offline, other sites are springing up. The Coco founder was charged with operating a platform that allegedly enabled a wide range of serious crimes, including sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, and financial crimes. He has denied the accusations and is awaiting trial.

Last year, the UK communications service regulator Ofcom investigated Motherless.com, not for the site’s content but for its parent company, the Luxembourg-registered Kick Online Entertainment S.A., allegedly failing to complete a “suitable and sufficient illegal content risk assessment.” The investigation was closed after the company provided the necessary paperwork, the regulator said. Ofcom opened a subsequent investigation into whether Kick Online Entertainment S.A. had put age checks in place to protect children from pornography, and in February 2026, fined the company. Motherless did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.  

Ofcom told CNN its job was “not to tell platforms which specific content to take down” and that the “responsibility is on platforms to decide whether content is illegal.”

Motherless has avoided being targeted for the type of content posted on its site due to US safe harbor protections that largely shield platform owners from direct liability for their users’ uploads.

This creates spaces where men like Pelicot can operate behind a veil of anonymity – their abuses too often invisible despite being plotted in plain sight.  

While it’s unclear what’s next for Piotr, the online communities he inhabited live on.