What men did to Gisèle Pelicot—her husband drugged the French woman and lent her out for rape—is not a bizarre, improbable aberration. It is a genre. Anyone searching the internet for pornographic images using terms like ‘asleep’ or ‘sleeping’ stumbles upon a vast collection of videos of men having sex with (seemingly) unconscious women or girls.
A notorious source for this genre is Motherless.com, a porn site running on Dutch servers, according to research by NRC. Moreover, the owner of the hosting company, Nforce in Roosendaal, has been offering its services to the site through its own foreign subsidiaries for well over a decade.
Under the headline ‘Revelation of a global rape academy,’ the American news channel CNN published a major investigation into the site in late March, which is estimated to attract tens of millions of visitors monthly. The site features thousands of videos of sex with unconscious women, and users exchange tips on drugging and raping partners. Some of the images show—very likely—underage victims. Sex with an incapacitated or unconscious person is considered rape in the Netherlands, which carries a maximum sentence of twelve years in prison.
Thousands of members communicate on forums
Motherless started in 2008 as a ‘regular’ porn site. In a US copyright lawsuit in 2018, owner and manager Joshua Lange claimed that he monitored the images visitors posted on his site seven days a week—as many as thirty to forty thousand per day, he said. He immediately removed all images of child abuse and bestiality, and anything that violated copyright, he told the judge; he only allowed legal content.
Lange’s self-proclaimed zeal could not prevent Motherless from filling up with illegal imagery anyway. Thousands of claims were filed by parties who saw their copyright violated on the site. And visitors could find CSAM there—child sexual abuse material—as evidenced by US lawsuits, among others. By now, the site is also a known source for the genre at the heart of the Pelicot case: sex with unconscious women.
The site functions as a community. Members can form groups and communicate with each other via forums. Some groups dedicated to sex with drugged or “sleeping” women number thousands of members. Direct searching for terms like ‘asleep’ is no longer possible on the site, but the images—thousands of videos—can still be found via a workaround. On the forums, members exchange tips on medication, drugs, and dosage. They submit requests to each other for sexual acts they want to see and ask which sites contain more of these types of images. Some men claim to offer their own partners.
Motherless.com rewards per view. Credits can be converted into money. With enough credits, users can also appropriate videos belonging to others; they are rewarded if these are viewed frequently.
The videos look alike. Women lie in unnatural positions on beds, couches, or on the floor. Clothes have been pushed aside or taken off. Sometimes objects have been stuffed into their mouths or insulting texts written on their bodies. Some users pull back the women’s eyelids in front of the camera or slap them in the face to show viewers that they are actually sedated.
In some of the material, it is impossible to determine whether the victims are adults; they appear very young. In a few videos, it is clear that the unconsciousness is being faked or that the woman is giving consent for the sex. In the vast majority of the videos, this is unclear.
Dutch men are also actively sharing footage of sex with women who are (apparently) unconscious. NRC found users who describe themselves and the women in their videos as Dutch. They have Dutch-sounding usernames containing ‘frikandel’ or ‘paasei’, and mention Dutch places of residence. There are Dutch groups on the site where videos are commented on in Dutch. Dozens of these types of videos are circulating in these groups.
Dubious client base
Last February, the British telecom regulator Ofcom imposed a fine of 800,000 pounds on the current owner of Motherless, the company Kick Online Entertainment S.A. This was for inadequate age verification of visitors to the porn site; the regulator had not examined the content of the images. Following the fine and the CNN report, British MPs and NGOs called for the site to be blocked. Activists urged their followers on social media to write to the hosting company. CDA MPs asked Minister David van Weel whether the justice system could track down any Dutch users, and whether this material could also be found on Dutch servers.
Yes, it could. Motherless has been a client of NForce in Roosendaal for years, which arranges server space and internet access for the site for a fee.
NForce is known as a company with a dubious client base. Far-right websites found a home there, as revealed by earlier research by NRC. In 2020, at the initiative of then Minister of Justice Ferd Grapperhaus, TU Delft compiled a list of Dutch hosting companies where the most child pornography material had been found. NForce topped the list by a wide margin.
In a conversation with NRC about the outcome of that investigation, the then operational manager defended himself. Legally speaking, what exactly a customer does on their rented servers is not the responsibility of the hosting company, he said. “It is just like a car on the highway that is used in a ram raid. Is the car rental company liable? Or the highway? Look, we don’t host anything ourselves; we only rent out server space.”
That is true. From a criminal perspective, it is difficult to prosecute a hosting company for illegal content distributed by customers. However, the industry did agree among themselves that such material—if reported—must be removed within 24 hours. Only if such removal requests are repeatedly not complied with can sanctions follow, such as a fine from the Authority for Terrorist Content and Child Abuse (ATKM).
However, a company can also choose for itself who it wants to accept as a client.
Conversations, documents, and public records show that the connection between NForce and Motherless goes back a long way. The current director and owner of NForce is the Israeli Simon Shlomi Elimeleh. He has been offering services to Motherless for more than ten years.
In 2018, Elimeleh acquired hosting company NForce with his Bulgarian company Vnet and became director in Roosendaal. The staff were surprised. They knew Elimeleh – as a client. He had been purchasing server space from NForce for years, which he then sublet to his own clients, acting as a sort of landlord. He did this through another limited liability company, his small Israeli internet company Securest, which was assigned client number 319 in its records. One of Elimeleh’s tenants ran the porn site Motherless on NForce’s servers. Elimeleh’s small Israeli company assisted with the hardware and settings and handled the registrations for the porn site.
The NForce staff had work to do on the site. Numerous reports of illegal material, including child pornography, were received regarding Motherless. In American legal documents, the site was designated as “a known child pornography site.” A copyright lawsuit was filed against the site’s administrator in the US.
None of this was a reason for Elimeleh to divest Motherless. His own limited company, now based in Bulgaria, still offers services to the site, as does his Dutch hosting company, NForce. CNN’s revelations about what could be found on the site did not change that.
No interference with content
Elimeleh answers NRC’s questions in writing.
Motherless.com is indeed a client of Securest and NForce, he writes, and he does not deny that both are his companies. He emphasizes that neither he nor his companies interfere with the content or management of the porn site. “This responsibility lies solely with the site administrator.”
When asked why he has kept Motherless as a client for years, despite the dubious reputation, the stream of complaints, and the CNN coverage, he says that “NForce understands that online discussions can raise concerns about certain websites and the content on them,” but that NForce, as an “infrastructure provider, does not make decisions based on public opinion, but on laws, rules, and contracts.” The existence of complaints and lawsuits in itself offers “no legal grounds” to turn clients away, he writes. He says nothing about the morality of retaining this client.
NForce requires customers to respond correctly to reports of abuse and remove illegal content in a timely manner, writes Elimeleh, if those reports have been submitted “through the proper channels.”
Two weeks ago, American political activist Maya May called on followers via Instagram to report Motherless en masse to NForce and to alert the company to CNN’s investigation.
One follower did so and shared the reply she received to her email online. The reply came from Elimeleh’s friend, who handles reports regarding illegal images on customer sites at NForce. “Your message does not meet the standards of a valid report under the law,” she wrote. Without an exact description of why the content is illegal, the exact location of the material, and a statement that the report is accurate, NForce could not take action.
