Trigger Warning: This article discusses sexual abuse and rape.
All 51 men in the Gisèle Pelicot mass rape trial, including ex-husband Dominique, were found guilty in December, but justice isn’t over as a new case is brought before the courts related to the website made notorious during the trial.
Isaac Steidl, 44, founder of now outlawed online chatroom called Coco, has been indicted by a French court on several charges, some of which are linked to the Pelicot case.
The website was used by Dominique to recruit strangers to rape his drugged and sedated wife of over 50 years, with the shocking abuse spanning over a decade. Pelicot received 20 years in jail for his crimes.
The now defunct site, called coco.fr, is believed to have first been created by Steidl, a then computer engineering graduate, as a platform for romantic meetings. However, it’s alleged the site was quickly adopted by drug dealers, paedophiles and sex offenders.
Calls for the site to be investigated and shutdown had been left unheard for years and even included a 20,000 signature petition.
“The coco site was a den of pedophiles,” Sophie Antoine, who works on legal issues and advocacy for the French organization Act Against the Prostitution of Children, told the NY Times. Antoine also revealed her organisation used it as a warning to show child-care professionals “how the ‘darknet’ really is in the open.”
The site was shutdown in June 2024 following an 18-month long investigation that saw Police freeze 5 millions euros in bank accounts across Hungary, Lithuania, Germany and the Netherlands.
In a statement, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau revealed the website had been implicated in more than 23,000 cases involving 480 alleged victims in France alone between the years of 2021 and 2024. Among the cases were allegations of sexual abuse of children, pimping, prostitution, rape, drug trafficking, scams and homicides.
Following a hearing last week, Steidl was released from jail and placed under “judicial supervision” which required a 100,000 euro bail payment. If found guilty he faces 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 7.5 million euros.
