It was a free chat site with a simple interface allowing users to communicate anonymously.
But the shut-down Coco forum turned into a “den of predators” with it now emerging it was used by Dominque Pelicot to organise the horrifying mass rape of his ex-wife Gisèle.
Pelicot, who was jailed for 20 years on Thursday, co-ordinated his abuse by finding many of the men who raped his wife on the illicit chat site, and then through the platform was able to conceal his crimes.
Inside a packed Vaucluse criminal courtroom in Avignon, 47 men, including Pelicot, were convicted of rape. Two others were found guilty of attempted rape, and another two guilty of sexual assault.
The three-month trial heard how Pelicot drugged his wife so he and stangers could abuse her while he filmed it. He catalogued more than 20,000 videos of the crimes carried out over a decade at their home in Avignon.
For updates on the verdicts – click here for our live blog
At the heart of the rape case was the anonymous forum, Coco, founded in 2003 by software engineer Isaac Steidl.
Although the site asked users to confirm that they were over 18, they could quickly change their age once they gained access to the platform and chat with an invented username.
Called “a den of predators” in France, human rights organizations, LGBTQ+ activists, and child protection association all raised concerns over it.
By this year it had been cited in more than 23,000 reports of criminal activity with more than 480 victims involved in judicial proceedings involving the site, according to French prosecutors.
On Pelicot, he used the anonymous pseudonym “à son insu”, meaning “without her knowledge” to solicit men to his home in southern France.
He claimed he and his wife shared a fetish for men having sex with her while she was asleep.
While many of the men invited claimed they believed they were engaging in a consensual sexual roleplay, investigators found that several times Pelicot also explicitly used the words “rape” and described drugging his wife to potential attackers.
Coco was unmoderated to the extent that Pelicot was able to use the forum for years without any penalty.
Authorities only became aware of him after a grocery store security guard caught him attempting to take videos of women who were shopping in 2020.
The website was finally closed after France’s national anti-organized crime authority Junalco launched an investigation and used a change in French law to hold administrators liable for certain activities on their sites.
Junalco was joined by agencies from several European countries – and despite a reported move of the site’s domain from France to Guernsey in 2022, the site was closed in June this year.
It’s yet unclear if prosecutors will launch a case against the site or its founder Steidl, who reportedly moved to Bulgaria two years ago.
Steidl’s lawyer Julien Zanetta told CNN earlier this year that his client would not comment on the use of the website by Pelicot in the crimes.
