Website with videos of sex abuse of drugged women, girls hosted in the Netherlands
The case of Gisèle Pelicot, whose husband drugged her and lent her unconscious body to dozens of men to rape her, made headlines worldwide. But it turns out that her case is not one horrifying incident. It’s a genre with many websites hosting videos of sex with “sleeping women” on which users exchange tips for drugging and raping their partners. One such site, Motherless.com, with millions of monthly visitors, is hosted in the Netherlands, by NForce in Roosendaal, NRC reported.
The American news channel CNN published a major investigation into the website in March. It found that the site features thousands of videos of sex with unconscious women and girls, some of whom look very young.
The videos are all very similar. Women and girls lie in unnatural positions on beds, couches, or the floor with their clothes pushed aside or taken off. Sometimes, objects have been stuffed into their mouths or texts written on their bodies. Some users pull back the women’s eyelids or slap them in the face to show viewers that she is sedated.
Further investigation by NRC found that Dutch men are also actively sharing images of sex with unconscious women on this site. Sex with an incapacitated or unconscious person is considered rape in the Netherlands. Perpetrators face up to 12 years in prison.
The newspaper found users who describe themselves or the women in their videos as Dutch, with Dutch-sounding usernames containing words like ‘frikandel’ or ‘paasei.’ There are also Dutch-language groups on the site where men comment on videos in Dutch.
NRC also discovered that Motherless is hosted in the Netherlands by the company NForce in Roosendaal. The company has arranged server space and internet access for the site for years. Conversations, documents, and public records show that the connection between NForce and the website goes back even further. NForce’s current director and owner, the Israeli Simon Shlomi Elimeleh, has been offering services to Motherless for over a decade.
The newspaper contacted Elimeleh to ask him about Motherless and the recent revelations about what is on the site. He confirmed that Motherless is a client of NForce and another of his companies, but stressed that neither he nor his companies interferes with the content or management of the sex abuse site. “The responsibility lies solely with the site administrator.”
“NForce understands that online discussions can raise concerns about certain websites and the content on them,” Elimeleh said, adding that NForce, as an “infrastructure provider, does not make decisions based on public opinion, but on laws, rules, and contracts.”
NForce gave a similar statement in 2020, when TU Delft compiled a list of Dutch hosting companies where the most child pornography material had been found. NForce topped that list by a wide margin. The company then told NRC that what a client does on their rented servers is not legally the responsibility of the hosting company.
That is true. It is difficult to criminally prosecute a hosting company for illegal content on its servers. However, the industry did agree among themselves that if criminal content is reported, it must be removed within 24 hours. And a company can choose who it accepts as a client.
