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Exposing a global ‘online rape academy’ that is teaching men how to abuse women and evade detection
CNN exposes an online network of men encouraging each other to drug and assault their partners, and swap tips on how to get away with it.
www.cnn.com
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.’”
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.
During the course of CNN's investigation, the “Zzz” group was taken off the messaging platform Telegram.
Telegram didn't respond directly to CNN's questions about the "Zzz" group, but in a statement to CNN following publication of this report, it said 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,” it said.
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 is crazy as hell.
