What Is The ‘Online Rape Academy’? Everything We Know
One of the inherent horrors of our digital age is that it is so much easier for cruel men to find like-minded people. The internet has understandably been horrified by an investigation from CNN into what’s been labeled an “online rape academy.”
Here’s everything we know.
What Is The Online Rape Academy?
These chat rooms first came to light in 2024 after Dominique Pelicot was arrested for drugging his wife and allowing her to be raped over 200 times by 70 men. Pelicot used a chat room called ”Without Her Knowledge” on the website Coco. Another similar chat room, simply called “Zzz” was hosted on Telegram, where thousands of men gave each other advice on how to drug and sexually abuse their partners.
What Did Participants Do?
The participants in the chat rooms would use various drugs to incapacitate their spouses or significant others and would record themselves sexually assaulting them. Some of the men would sell the videos, others would sell access to livestreams of them raping their partners while they were drugged, and, like in the case of Pelicot, some of the men would allow other men to rape their wives while they were drugged. Many of the videos were uploaded to the pornographic website “Motherless,” with a common trend being “eyecheck” videos where men would open the woman’s eyelids to prove she was actually asleep.
There is a disturbing degree of camaraderie in the chat rooms, as the men would casually give each other advice on how to drug their partners and give tips on what drugs to use.
How Did They Obtain The Drugs?
One of the men on the “Zzz” chat room told users that he sold a “sleeping liquid” that he was willing to ship to any address in the world for roughly $175. The man described the liquid as having no taste or odor. “Your wife won’t feel anything and won’t remember anything,” he said.
Other men in the group took to using easily obtainable prescription medicines or over-the-counter sleep aids as opposed to the “date rape drug” Rohypnol.
Were There Any Consequences?
For some of the men, yes. Many of the survivors interviewed by CNN asked for anonymity, but after they realized what was being done to them, they went to law enforcement, where several of the men were eventually convicted of sexual assault and are serving eight to 11-year prison sentences.
The problem with the anonymity these chat rooms provide is that it makes it harder to go after anyone involved. There’s also the inherent fact that women don’t know they’re being drugged, and as a result of the rape academy teaching men how to get away with assault, the men often use drugs that don’t remain in the woman’s system for long.
Drug-facilitated sexual abuse (DFSA) is often underreported due to feelings of shame or a woman simply not being aware that she was assaulted. Even if a woman realizes that she’s being raped by her partner, law enforcement won’t always hold the men accountable. Amanda Stanhope, one of the victims interviewed by CNN, said that when she realized her partner was committing DFSA and brought forth video evidence to the police, “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,’” Stanhope told CNN.
Her partner was eventually charged, but that initial response by the police plays a large part in why these cases are underreported, and convictions are rare.
Is The Online Rape Academy Still Up?
Coco was shut down shortly after the Pelicot case, and Telegram removed the “Zzz” chat room from its platform. Telegram released a statement to CNN saying that content that “encourages sexual violence is explicitly forbidden” by its terms of service and is “removed whenever discovered.”
“Moderators empowered with custom AI tools proactively monitor public parts of the app and accept reports in order to ban accounts breaching our terms of service and remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day, including content that calls for sexual violence,” the statement added.
While the Telegram chat room and Coco website have been taken down, several other similar chat rooms have sprung up in their wake.
This case gets at the heart of the “not all men” argument that gets thrown around whenever men are confronted with stories about men behaving monstrously. These assaults weren’t committed by random men. This was calculated rape and exploitation by men whom these women trusted and, in many cases, committed their lives to.
People they had children with.
Does it suck that men like this make it harder for women to trust us? Absolutely, but I can’t blame a woman for being guarded, knowing that the average man is capable of this type of behavior. If you have friends who engage in exploitive behavior or are blatant misogynists, call them out on it. If you have teen boys, talk to them about consent and monitor what they’re seeing on their algorithms. The behaviors and ideas expressed by these men aren’t limited to these chat rooms, but are being spread by manosphere influencers across TikTok and Instagram as well. Instead of getting defensive and trying to argue that “most men are good, actually,” we need to be holding men like this to account and forcefully saying this kind of behavior isn’t OK.
If you’re really serious about protecting your daughters, try talking to your sons.
SEE ALSO:
Rep. Eric Swalwell Suspends Governor Campaign Amid Sexual Assault Allegations
Reps Eric Swalwell And Tony Gonzales Resign From Congress
