We caught a glimpse of this online world in 2024, when the mass rape trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men in southern France exposed how an online chatroom called "Without Her Knowledge" had allowed Pelicot to recruit dozens of men to rape his then-wife, Gisèle, while she was drugged unconscious. She was raped more than 200 times by 70 men, not all of whom police were able to identify. Pelicot had organised the abuse through the website Coco, which was subsequently shut down.
But the behaviour did not disappear. A months-long CNN As Equals investigation uncovered a hidden online world where the commodification and amplification of sexual violence against women is flourishing.
A platform hosting thousands of assault videos
At the centre of the investigation is Motherless.com, a pornographic website that 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 total visits in February 2026 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 of the material posted is in serious doubt.
The so-called "sleep" content is organised using 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 videos surpassing 50,000 views.
CNN's investigation also led reporters to a Telegram chat group called "Zzz," where nearly 1,000 users had joined its discussions. Inside the group, members exchanged specific advice on which substances to use, what doses to administer, and how to avoid detection, with one user advising another to "always start low" and work up to higher doses over time. Another described administering a sedative to his partner dissolved in a milkshake, concealing a second drug inside a tablet. CNN has not published the names of the specific medicines or doses described.
One user in the group claimed to be running a business shipping "sleeping liquids" anywhere in the world for approximately €150 a bottle, promising the substance was tasteless and odourless. Some users advertised paid livestreams showing the abuse of drugged women in real time, charging around $20 per viewer and accepting cryptocurrency.
Three survivors speak
CNN spoke with three women who survived this form of abuse. Zoe Watts, from Devon, England, learned in 2018 that her husband of 16 years had been crushing her son's sleeping medication into her evening tea and raping her while she was unconscious. He told her the abuse had been going on for years. After a lengthy legal process that saw her children targeted for bullying and her social network destroyed, her ex-husband was sentenced to 11 years in prison for rape, sexual assault by penetration, and drugging.
"We worry about who's coming behind us, walking down the street, or who's even friending us on Facebook," Watts told CNN. "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 realise I had to."
Amanda Stanhope, from Wigan in northwest England, said she was inspired by Gisèle Pelicot's decision to waive her anonymity at trial. Over five years, Stanhope said she would regularly fall asleep without remembering how, waking to bruises on her body and with no memory of what had occurred. When she confronted her partner, she said he told her she was "imagining it" and was "mental." Her former partner was charged with rape and sexual assault but took his own life before the case reached court.
A third survivor, identified by CNN only as Valentina to protect her identity, is a mother of two in northern Italy who discovered videos her husband had filmed over 20 years of marriage, showing him abusing her after drugging her with alcohol and sedatives. In 2021, her former husband was sentenced to eight years in prison for multiple aggravated sexual assaults.
'A school of violence'
Experts told CNN the online communities surrounding this content are not simply passive repositories of abuse material, they actively teach and encourage it. Annabelle Montagne, a psychologist who assessed half of the men convicted in the Pelicot trial, said participants find a sense of collective identity and mutual reinforcement within these groups. Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Durham University and expert on violence against women and girls, said the growing presence of voyeuristic content on mainstream pornographic sites glorifies abusive behaviour both online and off, and that governments have been too reluctant to hold platforms directly accountable.
Sandrine Josso, a French lawmaker who was herself drugged by a former French senator and has since campaigned on drug-facilitated sexual abuse, described the groups in stark terms. "I would even call them an online rape academy, where every subject is taught," she told CNN. "There are all the 'subjects' and 'disciplines' needed to become a good rapist or sexual predator."
A perpetrator in Poland
CNN's investigation also tracked a man identified as Piotr in Poland, who communicated openly with reporters for months through the "Zzz" group, sharing what he said were photographs of his wife and describing in detail how he drugged and assaulted her. When CNN travelled to his hometown to confirm his identity, reporters located him and his wife at a local restaurant but chose not to confront him directly out of concern for her safety, instead reporting their findings to police. In early April 2026, Polish authorities arrested a man on charges of aggravated rape in the Lublin district. Polish media identified the man arrested as "Piotr." Prosecutors said he had admitted to the charges. He faces between three and 20 years in prison if convicted.
Platforms under scrutiny
The "Zzz" Telegram group was taken offline during the course of CNN's investigation. Telegram said in a statement that content encouraging sexual violence is explicitly forbidden under its terms of service and is removed whenever discovered. Motherless did not respond to CNN's request for comment.
In the UK, the communications regulator Ofcom investigated Motherless' parent company, the Luxembourg-registered Kick Online Entertainment S.A., over its failure to complete a legally required illegal content risk assessment. That investigation was closed after the company provided the necessary documentation. 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. Ofcom told CNN its role was not to direct platforms on which specific content to remove, placing the responsibility on the platforms themselves.
In the United States, Motherless has largely avoided legal accountability for content posted by its users due to safe harbour protections that shield platform owners from liability for third-party uploads.
Data that is 'scarce by design'
The full scale of drug-facilitated sexual assault globally remains unknown. A World Health Organisation spokesperson told CNN that there are no reliable estimates because of how severely underreported it is, with many victims experiencing guilt, embarrassment, or having little or no memory of the assault. In England and Wales, 43% of recorded sexual assaults involved a partner or ex-partner, according to March 2025 data, and the proportion of victims recorded as having been assaulted while unconscious or asleep has risen to 23% over the past decade. Conviction rates for sexual offences across Europe and the United States remain low.
US-based sleep specialist Michel Cramer Bornemann told CNN that the landscape is also shifting, with perpetrators increasingly using readily available prescription medicines that act quickly and leave little trace in the body, making it harder for such cases to reach trial.
Source: CNN As Equals investigation