The internet holds a lot of things, and among the endless streams of information, people are the users, and platforms are the facilitators.
And just like what happened throughout the past, governments have allowed websites to operate, as long as the obey the rules, or risk being blocked. In worse case scenario, they are forced to terminate.
The latter is exactly what happened to a website called 'Coco.fr'.
Or also known as Coco Chat, or alternately as Cocoland, the website was a free, no-registration online chat platform with optional premium features. Created by Isaac Steidl in 2003, shortly after graduating as a computer engineer, it was a platform originally intended for amorous encounters, but he shifted the strategy by making it lack moderation, in order to become more attractive to users, which apparently included criminals.
After gaining notoriety over the years due to its association with various police and judicial cases, the platform finally met its end, and ceased operations in June 2024, following a criminal case that shocked France.
Coco Chat connected users through public or private chat rooms, offered as an accessible alternative to older group chat systems like Internet Relay Chat (IRC), allowing direct exchanges between individuals. Frequently compared to a dating site, it gained popularity, particularly among the LGBTQ+ community, due to its emphasis on anonymity.
But it's mainly because of its unmoderated nature, that Coco Chat became the safe haven for both free speech, hate, and racism.
And because it offered users an anonymous status, it also became the hotspot for criminal activities, including pedophilia, drug trafficking, and homophobic attacks.
It was also a place where sexual abuse was shared and normalized.
In other words, Coco Chat became the facilitator of those with ill intentions.
Then, on June 25, 2024, the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office announced the judicial seizure of Coco Chat's servers, citing multijurisdictional cooperation through Eurojust.
The order of the closure was filed following the Gisèle Pélicot case, where she was mass raped by at least 51 men in the course of nearly a decade
The case, which is often referred to as the Mazan rapes, is a harrowing account of prolonged sexual abuse, masterminded by her own then-husband, Dominique Pélicot.
The couple were married ror several decades, residing in Mazan, a southern town of Avignon in France.
On the outside, Dominique may look like an ordinary man, but on the inside, he harbored sinister intentions that would lead to one of France's most egregious cases of sexual violence.
Between 2011 and 2020, Dominique systematically drugged Gisèle, rendering her unconscious. And during these periods, he facilitated and orchestrated her rape by numerous men, whom he contacted through online platforms.
Most notably, he used Coco Chat to not only facilitate communications with his wife's would-be rapists, but also to document the assaults.
Through the anonymous platform, Dominique who was using a pseudonym, had amassed a collection of photographs and videos of his wife, being raped by strangers, again and again, during the span of more than just years.
Dominique made contact with the men on Coco Chat through a thread on the site entitled à son insu, meaning "without her knowing."
He would contact the men, and had them chat through other platforms, like Skype, where he would show flip the camera of his device to show his unconscious wife, and invite them to join.
He shared sexually explicit photos of his wife in the forum as well as his technique for drugging her with crushed tranquilizers and sleeping pills that he put in her food and drink.
Gisèle testified that she was completely unaware of her husband’s actions.
After all, the years-worth of sexual abuse had began to take a physical toll on body that Gisèle complained about body and pelvic pain, court documents said. And because of unknowingly consuming sedatives for a long time had also given her memory loss concerns.
Dominique who knew this, accompanied her on several doctor's visits, just like how a normal husband would.
The abuse came to light in 2020 when Dominique was stopped by the police after he was caught filming upskirts of female shoppers in a local supermarket.
Whilst investigating the case, the police that confiscated his hard drive, laptop and phones and found hundreds of images and videos of Gisèle being raped.
This was when his web of crimes came to light.
The revelation opened one of the worst sex offense cases in modern French history.
The police began to unearth what the 71-year-old retiree did to enlist dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife in her own bed over a decade.
Through photo evidence on Dominique's devices and on Coco Chat, the French police opened a case that also dived deep into the thousands of messages exchanged by Dominique with these men.
In some of the messages, a number of those who chatted with Dominique had expressed their admiration for Dominique, and shared their own desire to do the same to their partners.
In fact, another defendant on trial wasn’t accused of raping Gisèle but has been convicted with drugging and raping his own wife, and attempting what Dominque did to Gisèle.
In all, these served as key evidence in the trial of Dominique and the co-defendants, who have all been tracked down by the police.
These people include a firefighter to a journalist to a nurse, and other men from different backgrounds.
The youngest accused is 27 years old, while the oldest is 74.
All the men on trial in Avignon lived less than 50 kilometers from the Pélicots' house.
In total, Gisèle Pélicot was drugged by him and, while unconscious, and raped over 200 times by 70 men.
Forty-nine of them, including Dominique, have been convicted of aggravated rape and two of sexual assault.
It then realized that Caroline Darian, the daughter of Gisèle and Dominique Pélicot, also claimed to have sustained years of horrific sexual abuse.
Just like her mother, Caroline was also called by police, and was shown photos found on Dominique’s laptop. The police showed her photos of herself lying unconscious on a bed wearing only a T-shirt and underwear. all of which were taken without her consent.
Caroline described how she’s certain her father drugged her and strongly suspects she was raped too.
She believe this because the police had shown her photos they found on Dominique's devices, which showed an unconscious woman on a bed, half naked.
At first, she couldn't tell the woman was her, before the police said to look at the unique visible mark on the cheek.
While Caroline believes that her own father had violated her sexually, she couldn't prove her beliefs.
"But I don’t have any evidence," she said.
She said how it's a mental “burden” to be the daughter of both victim and perpetrator, as she expressed her strong desire for her father to die in prison.
In response, Dominique said that he had never abused Caroline.
The founder of the website used by Dominique Pélicot to recruit the men to rape his wife has been placed under arrest in France.
Isaac Steidl, a 44-year-old man, originally had the website registered in Guernsey, before it became the breeding ground for criminals, and facilitated more 23,000 crimes, including murder.
Steidl was first questioned in Bulgaria, while his wife was believed to have been interrogated in southern France. A month later two of the site’s moderators were detained for questioning, one near Calais in northern France and the other in Limoges.
Before facilitating the Mazan rapes, the site was behind the Richard Dewitte Case, where the singer of the band Il était une fois was sentenced to 3 years in prison for corruption of a minor under 15 years old. He was found guilty of making sexual propositions to a 13-year-old girl via the Coco Chat website.
The website was also behind the homophobic murder of Michel Sollossi, where he was stabbed to death by Mohamed E., a man he had met on the Coco Chat website.
According to a local French news website, at least 300 men were assaulted after falling into similar traps on Coco Chat between 2018 and 2022.
In all, 480 victims have been identified.
And here, Coco Chat was forced to shut down after the three-month trial ended with Pélicot being given a 20-year sentence for secretly drugging and raping Gisèle.
Fifty other defendants were given sentences of between three and 15 years in jail by Vaucluse criminal court in Avignon.
The two lawyers representing Gisele Pélicot have repeatedly warned in court that these kinds of dangers will continue to exist if websites such as Coco are allowed to operate without sufficient scrutiny or legal challenge.
One of them, Antoine Camus, has likened the site to the “murder weapon” Dominique Pélicot used to carry out his crimes, telling the court that “without this website” the case “would never have reached such proportions.”
Criminal cases like this are often kept away from the public eye, through closed courtrooms, where courts may conduct proceedings behind closed doors for sensitive cases this rape..
There are also legal system that protect the privacy of rape victims during court proceedings.
In France, rape victims are granted the legal right to remain anonymous to protect them from public scrutiny or stigma.
But Gisèle waived all that.
She chose to waive her anonymity and face the men accused in a court process open to the media and members of the public.
She hopes that doing so would help other women speak up and show other victims of sexual assault and rape that they have nothing to be ashamed of.
The case has profound repercussions, both personally for the Pélicot family and societally.
Gisèle's daughter, Caroline, has been vocal about the trauma inflicted by her father, and has become an advocate for abuse survivors, authoring a book titled I'll Never Call Him Dad Again, aiming to raise awareness about chemical submission and sexual violence.
Gisèle herself has emerged as a symbol of resilience, with her story prompting national conversations in France about victim support, the dangers of unmoderated online platforms, and the imperative for vigilance against sexual predators.
The Mazan rapes case underscores the critical need for awareness, support systems for victims, and stringent measures to prevent such atrocities in the future.
Isaac was charged with offences including administering an online platform to facilitate an illegal transaction by an organized gang.
The 44-year-old was originally charged with complicity in drug trafficking, possession and distribution of images of child pornography, corruption of minors through the internet, as well as aggravated money laundering, and the administration of an online platform to facilitate an illegal transaction by an organized gang.
He was placed under judicial supervision with the obligation to pay bail of €100,000, and banned from leaving the country, said prosecutors.