The case of Gisèle Pelicot caused horror around the world.Image: keystone
The coco platform, on which Gisèle Pelicot’s rapists, among others, exchanged information, is active again two years after it was banned. Another has just been taken offline – at least for now.
05/13/2026, 04:5905/13/2026, 04:59
The website coco.fr was banned in 2024 during the Pelicot trial. Anyone who thought that the plague of these digital meeting places was under control was mistaken: Now it turns out that the platform through which Gisèle Pelicot’s rapists met is making a comeback.
The name has changed slightly to cocoland, the owner is no longer the same, but the horrifying content remains the same: ultimately it’s about exchanging videos and invitations to rape unconscious wives and other women.
The regional newspaper “Ouest-France” announced the return of this forum for swingers and partner swapping in mid-April. The Green MP Arnaud Bonnet called for a prompt response from the judiciary, and the public prosecutor opened criminal proceedings for possible acts of violence, deprivation of liberty and pedophilia. The latter was because the television station had covertly registered with BFM as a 13-year-old girl and immediately received sexual videos.
Cocoland.fr preempted a ban and was no longer active on Monday. A second address with the modified domain name cocoland.info complained about an alleged mix-up, but also took itself off the Internet.
“Not adults, but criminals”
New offshoots are said to have already taken their place – because the business is very profitable. On Saturday, the French government shut down a site called Motherlesswhere videos of rape, drugged women and minors circulated. “This was not content for ‘adults’, but for criminals,” explained Women’s Minister Aurore Bergé.
The Pelicot case website is back online under a new name.Image: Getty Images
The website, whose servers are located in the Netherlands, was recently taken offline by the authorities. However, cyber protection only intervened after CNN reported on the high-turnover network address, which was not only active in France.
On another forum called “zzz,” men exchanged tips about the best medicines or drugs to use to anesthetize a woman. “The Internet and Darknet act as a kind of accelerator,” criminologist Dirk Baier analyzed to CH Media when it became known. Illegal behavior is normalized in such forums.
MP Sandrine Josso, herself a victim of a drug attack in Paris, called the website an “actual academy of rape” in the CNN report. Speaking to our newspaper, activist Maïté Meeus called the rise of such platforms through the Pelicot case a turning point: “It has shown that perpetrators are not the ‘stranger in the dark alley’, but can be one’s own husband.”
“Never chat drunk”
In France, the fourth-largest consumer of porn content, criminal police have already pursued numerous other websites since Coco was shut down two years ago. She is currently investigating addresses such as chaat.fr or chatiw.fr.
They act as normal dating sites and warn you about criminally relevant content in order not to be sanctioned by the authorities. On Chatiw on Monday, for example, you could read the advice that you should “never chat while drunk”.
But this moderation is only a sham, says women’s rights activist Vigdis Morisse-Herrera. In reality, the most extreme videos of rape and the like generated the highest click-through rates. As in YouTube’s payment system, they provided the highest profits. “The cursor is therefore shifting to increasingly harder videos,” says Morisse-Herrera. “People are no longer looking for artificially staged porn, they want real videos.” (aargauerzeitung.ch)