The vast network of men drugging and raping their wives

[0:04] We've been messaging for months, this man and I, [0:07] but he doesn't know who I am because I've been undercover posing as a man. [0:20] Two years ago, the world was shocked by the case of Dominic Pellicot. [0:25] Dominic Pellicot committed to recruiting... [0:28] ...enlisting other... [0:28] A French man who drugged his wife and invited dozens to rape her. [0:33] For almost a decade, he secretly dosed her drinks and sexually assaulted her. [0:38] Our months-long investigation has revealed he was far from unique. [0:41] These communities exist and continue to feed off what happened to you. [0:46] Pellicot is not an outlier. [0:52] What's your emergency? [0:53] Using our sun-sleeping medication. [0:55] He's been drugged. [0:56] The bedroom isn't safe. The bed is not safe. [1:02] We infiltrated a vast international network hiding in plain sight. [1:07] And it led us to the same room as a man who said he was drugging and raping his wife. [1:12] I think he's going to be at this restaurant nearby. [1:16] I think I'll be able to pick him out. [1:17] But it is going to be quite unnerving being in the same room as him. [1:20] That's him. I recognise him. [1:33] Emergency. [1:34] More than connecting. [1:35] Go ahead, call her. What's your emergency? [1:38] I've just heard from my daughter. [1:41] She's on her own in the house with four children. [1:43] And has just learned she's been drugged with her son's sleeping medicine. [1:48] We worry about his coming behind us, walking down the street. [1:52] We worry about going to our car late at night, but we don't worry about who we lie next to. [1:57] I didn't realise I had to. [1:59] Zoe Watts may never know if the videos her husband made of her being raped were ever uploaded online. [2:06] But huge numbers of videos are being posted by users who claim it's non-consensual. [2:12] One website profiting from this is motherless.com. [2:17] Last year, we began investigating a porn site that gets over 60 million visits a month, [2:22] focusing on the thousands of videos featuring women who appear unconscious during sex acts. [2:28] It's home to over 20,000 videos of so-called sleep content with hundreds of thousands of views. [2:35] One popular hashtag is iCheck, a way of proving a woman is asleep. [2:41] We created a fake name and soon got into a private Telegram group [2:45] that's dedicated to sharing sleep content with almost a thousand members. [2:50] So some person will say, oh, I'm thinking about drugging my wife tonight. [2:53] Someone is like, great idea. You should give her this, this. [2:56] The Telegram conversation makes it real. [3:00] It feels like it's all happening there. [3:02] And that you're fearful of someone actually turning on their webcam [3:06] and showing you, you know, their wife there and then. [3:09] Survivors of these assaults like Zoe often spend months or years [3:16] trying to rationalise what's happening to them. [3:18] She met her husband when she was 17. [3:21] He's now serving 11 years for rape, sexual assault by penetration and drugging. [3:26] On the face of it, and certainly to the public, he did see Mr. Perfect, [3:32] but there was an undercurrent throughout the marriage. [3:37] She had no reason to suspect that he'd been raping her for what she now believes was 10 years. [3:43] Then one Sunday after church, he confessed to crushing pills into her drink. [3:48] He reeled off a list of his wrongdoings to me as if it was, you know, a shopping list. [3:56] I've done this, this, this, this, this and this. I've been using our son's sleeping medication [4:02] to put in your last cup of tea at night to tie you down, take photographs and rape you. [4:07] And I think I just went into shock. [4:09] I became ill, very ill and had lost weight and couldn't really leave the house. [4:16] I found it. I don't think I knew how to be around people at that time because I felt so broken. [4:24] Zoe kept the abuse secret for a few months as she grappled with what had happened to her. [4:28] Speaking out only after a severe panic attack, her mother then called the police. [4:33] There were some times that I thought, you know, this isn't right. [4:36] But what would it mean? What would our, what would our family look like? [4:40] Their children would, would be without a dad and there would be a reputation. [4:44] And my boys would grow up having a reputation and they'd know what their dad was doing. [4:48] I've noticed you haven't used the word rape a lot in, you know, tell me, tell me why. [4:52] It just doesn't, I don't know. It's, it's like one of those things really. [4:57] I, um, I really, I struggle with that to say that that's what's happened. [5:03] It's like people can say it to me, but I just don't think. [5:08] You know, you're not alone. [5:14] Yeah, yeah, sadly. [5:33] We messaged with multiple users across the US, the UK, France, Brazil, and beyond, [5:39] who mostly communicated in English. [5:41] I connected on Motherless with a user who was selling liquid sedative. [5:45] Over Telegram, he told me he was running a business, shipping it worldwide. [5:49] A bottle costs $175. [5:52] He's just answered. [5:55] There's no taste in it and your wife will not feel anything and will not remember anything. [6:00] Now he gives instructions on how to use it. [6:02] One day, a man in the group we're calling Piotr, not his real name, asked, is anyone awake? [6:08] I replied and soon he DM'd me. [6:11] Without encouraging him, I tried to find out how he was managing to do this. [6:29] Who was he? Where was he? [6:31] As he continued to share his experience with me, hundreds of users in the group were also [6:36] coaching one another on how to sedate their partners. [6:46] Liquids, pills, step-by-step instructions from dozens of drugs [6:51] to exact dosages were all in the chat. [6:53] Many of them, everyday medicines. [6:56] Even when women come forward, proving it can be nearly impossible. [7:03] Some drugs leave the body within 12 hours. [7:06] Survivors often only realize much later what happened. [7:09] And even with the courage to speak out, there are still countless roadblocks when it comes [7:13] to reporting to police or bringing a legal case. [7:16] Amanda Stanhope didn't know her partner had been abusing her for five years. [7:22] What were some of the physical signs? [7:23] I'd wake up on a towel that wasn't there when I went to bed. [7:29] And sometimes I'd go to bed with, I'd remember wearing shorts and a t-shirt, [7:39] and they wouldn't be there when I woke up the next morning. [7:43] I often found lots of bruises on my body that hadn't been there previously. [7:53] Her former partner was charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault. [7:58] The police had to look through all these videos. [8:01] And what did they make of them? [8:04] The one where I was absolutely horrified and he'd performed a sexual act on my face whilst I was unconscious. [8:18] And it was completely clear. [8:21] And the police looked at this one and I thought, there's the evidence. [8:27] And the police said to me, well, we can't use that. [8:35] That isn't clear evidence because it looks like you're pretending to be asleep. [8:42] In England, where survivors Amanda and Zoe live, nearly a quarter of sexual assault victims are [8:49] assaulted while unconscious or asleep. And that number has risen over the last decade. [8:54] Amanda's ex took his own life before the case could go to court. [8:58] She's still piecing her life back together. [9:01] And the shock of learning about group chats where this kind of abuse continues hasn't faded. [9:07] Instantly my whole body goes and my hands start shaking. [9:13] I don't even have a word for it. That it's being glorified. [9:19] And men are teaching others how to do this. [9:26] And they're doing this to the people they say they love. It's beyond evil. [9:37] While survivors may not remember the videos being filmed, [9:40] men in the telegram groups we tracked are making money from them. [9:43] Selling clips and live streams for as little as $20. [9:50] You're hearing a woman snoring in a clip from a live stream advertised in this group [9:54] as a way to entice users to pay for more. [9:57] The user claimed it was his wife who was asleep and who he was about to rape. [10:04] Processing this kind of material raises a nearly unanswerable question. [10:09] Why do some men encourage these crimes while others go on to commit them? [10:13] A psychologist who assessed dozens of the defendants in the Pelico case [10:17] thinks they were motivated by fantasies of domination. [10:21] Fueled by a culture that to this day treats many women as objects to be controlled. [10:26] The immense trauma can leave survivors feeling like their identity [10:37] has all but vanished with what remains of it shaped only by the abuse. [10:42] Rebuilding trust in themselves and others is a long road. [10:45] Allora all inizio del video ci sono io sdraiata sul divano già inconsciente e lui con questo [10:59] bicchierino di Montenegro mette una siringa dentro aspira e me la mette in bocca avrà [11:08] fatto per una ventina di volte. [11:11] A volte le persone più subdole sono quelle più vicine a te proprio quelle con cui abiti non ti puoi [11:20] veramente fidare di nessuno. Secondo me è stato autodidatta proprio. Si è informato tramite internet. [11:28] Valentina is a mother of two who asked us not to use her real name. We've distorted [11:34] her voice to protect her identity. Her husband was sentenced to eight years in prison for multiple [11:40] aggravated sexual assaults. [11:42] Per quanto tu possa essere menefreghista ce l'hai sempre lì a lato. Basta un letto, [11:50] basta una telecamera, un profumo differente che da quel giorno lì sicuramente è cambiato [11:59] anche qualcosa in me. Per quanto io possa essere magari felice e sorridente fuori, poi torno a casa [12:08] e devo comunque fare amicizia con i miei incubi che sono sempre dietro alla porta. [12:17] While talking to survivors, the man I was DMing continued to message and send me videos. [12:22] The next day, Pyotr wrote that he hadn't put his wife to sleep in some time, [12:29] as the doctor didn't want to prescribe any more sleeping pills, [12:33] but he continued to send photos. We don't know when they were taken. [12:37] It's made me even more determined to try and meet him, to get him in person. [12:43] So I'm going to send him a message now and I'm going to see if he would meet with us. [12:51] By now, we'd worked out he was in Poland and we knew roughly where he lived, but he refused to meet. [12:59] And then, a tip. He let slip that he was planning to attend a party. [13:03] It's him. I recognise him. So we're inside the restaurant and I've just seen him dancing with her. [13:22] And at the start of this investigation, all of these men were faceless. [13:28] And so seeing him tonight has just really brought home the fact that this is happening in real life. [13:37] The man who had been messaging me, day and night, was only a few feet away, oblivious. [13:44] I'd come to see if he was real, and there he was with his wife. The same people I saw in the videos. [13:51] We couldn't approach Pyotr's wife without potentially putting her in danger, [13:55] so we reached out to police about our findings. The Telegram group me infiltrated eventually [14:01] disappeared, but it's a pattern authorities know well. One goes offline, another soon resurfaces. [14:09] We reached out to both Motherless and Telegram, but did not receive a response. [14:13] As campaigns by German journalists to shut down Motherless and strengthen moderation [14:17] on similar platforms continue, videos of women who appeared to be abused while unconscious [14:22] are still being uploaded. And US safe harbour laws largely protect the site from liability. [14:29] In the end, it all comes back to Giselle Pellico. With astonishing dignity, [14:34] she has taken hold of her own harrowing experience. [14:37] In reporting this case, we've spoken to multiple survivors who say they were drugged and raped by [14:42] their husbands, and many of them see you as a source of strength. With your permission, [14:46] I'd like to read you some of the messages that these survivors have sent to me to read to you. [14:52] One survivor, her name is Amanda Stanhope, she lives in Wigan. [14:56] Her strength inspired me to speak out. She broke the silence and shame, so many survivors are forever [15:02] grateful to her. I'd love to say thank you. If she can do it, then so can I. [15:07] I'd love to say thank you. [15:11] It's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing. [15:16] It's amazing to say that they've found this strength. [15:18] I've been able to transmit it. It's won. [15:20] Because we need to be solidified with everything that's happening. [15:24] Because if we stay in our house, we'll never change our consciousness. [15:28] And I say, bravo, mesdames, bravo. Don't be ashamed of having done it. [15:32] It's necessary that all women can do this march, even if it's very difficult, even if it's very complicated in their heads. [15:37] But they'll arrive. It takes time. It can take months, days, maybe even years. [15:42] But they'll end up. [15:44] Giselle says men can be allies and still believe society can change. [15:49] But for those who think they're immune, she has a warning. [15:52] I would say, messieurs, pensez à votre mère, pensez à votre soeur, pensez à votre fille, quand vous faites ça. [15:57] Est-ce qu'il y a un moment où vous allez vous dire que ce que je suis en train de faire, c'est vraiment un acte criminel ? [16:03] Et de dire, faites bien attention, parce qu'un jour, vous serez peut-être, on va vous surprendre. [16:09] Peut-être que les compagnes auxquelles vous les soumettez, un jour, vont se réveiller et elles pourront dénoncer.