This article references rape and sexual abuse.
For a decade, Dominique Pélicot orchestrated the drugging and rape of his wife, Gisèle Pélicot, by 72 men he recruited through the notorious Coco website (now shut down). Fifty of them were identified from the 20,000 videos he meticulously filmed. And we learned all of this through a public trial (in which he and 51 men were found guilty).
As an activist who started Chayn, a non-profit against gender-based violence and, specifically, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, I am pleased to see that this trial has shattered the myth that these crimes only happen on the dark web by “monsters”.
While lawmakers and law enforcement have been going after the 4chan’s of the world – hundreds of websites like Coco have been flourishing right under our gaze, slipping through antiquated legal cracks which absolve platforms from having any responsibility to moderate and prevent these crimes. Labelling men who partake in such misogynistic and violent websites as monsters like the press has been calling Dominique Pélicot (“Monster of Avignon”) might feel comforting (surely these men are few and lonesome, “mad” men), but in this case, this myth has been unravelled quite painfully too.
The men who chose to rape an unconscious and lifeless Gisèle Pélicot had all visited the unmoderated Coco website and spoken to Pélicot on the forum “without her knowledge”. This website, founded in 2003, was known to law enforcement for a long time with multiple complaints from NGOs who monitored it.
Between Jan 2021 — May 2024, over 23,000 legal proceedings were opened against Coco by 480 victims. The platform was unmoderated, and in the instances that a user would get banned from the site for breaking the code of conduct, paying a mere €10 would reinstate the account. Content moderation and codes of conduct that are meaningful and effectively enforced have long been an area of concern and campaigning by civil society and affected groups.
But Coco is just one of many sites. A recent investigation by CNN during the Pélicot trial found that even on just one website (not on the dark web), rape and sexual abuse were being actively discussed by users showing similar patterns, and a recently exposed Telegram chatgroup (private and unmoderated) of more than 70,000 members was found to be a hotbed of discussions around how men have raped their sisters and mothers as well as offering their wives to be sexually abused by others. The underbelly of the internet isn’t just the dark web – it can be the everyday platforms operating in plain sight.
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence is rarely a case of a singular platform in a single country. It’s more complex. A conversation may start on a Reddit forum but move on to a private platform, like Telegram or an obscure private messaging platform. The users can be within a 30-mile local radius, as with Dominique Pélicot, or spread worldwide, making it harder for platforms and law enforcement to track and charge them. This is why a multi-platform and multi-jurisdictional approach is imperative to tackle online violence.