Content warning: This story mentions rape and sexual assault. If this is triggering in any way, please refrain from reading.
In all transparency, I reworked this opening paragraph about five times. I struggled with finding a way to open this article that introduced the topic with the utmost care. During what I thought was a harmless doom scroll, I learned about the “rape academy” CNN exposed last month. Reading about these horrific acts committed against women encouraged me to bring more recognition to rape culture and the horrors that women go through on the daily.
On Dec. 19, 2024, a man named Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years for aggravated rape of his wife Gisele Pelicot. For the last 15 years of their 47-year marriage, Pelicot organized a community of men to assault his drugged and unconscious wife. Gisele was raped over 200 times by 70 different men, while all of it was filmed. Typically during these cases, the victim chooses to remain anonymous to the public. Gisele however, took it as an opportunity to flip the face of shame. She became a symbol of strength versus a figure of humiliation, demonstrating to women all around the world that they can reclaim their power. Although this case spotlighted these kinds of websites, the behavior has not yet decreased.
CNN journalists did a month long investigation to uncover a website that normalizes a certain type of sexual violence against women. On this website, married men create chatrooms to converse about techniques for drugging and raping their wives. One example of the techniques shared is the “eyecheck.” This is when the man would lift the eyelid of his wife to determine whether or not she was fully unconscious. Some of these videos surpass 50K views. The horrifying reality doesn’t stop there, for distribution of a sleep drug also happens on this website.
This website isn’t exactly unheard of. In February alone (the shortest month of the year), this website had over 62M hits. Most of them are coming from the U.S. Putting that into perspective, that is almost eight times the population of New York City.
Women are raised to be cautious about anyone outside of their personal circle. We are told to constantly look over our shoulder on the street or to cover our drinks on a night out. The sad reality is that women need to be careful about everyone around them. 51.1% of female rape victims report that they were raped by an intimate partner and 40.8% reported they were raped by an acquaintance. With these numbers being so incredibly high it leads me and other women to believe that we are not safe in most places.
The one silver lining to this is that more kinds of sexual abuse are being brought to light. Spreading awareness about this topic is so important because it educates women to be more aware and safer. I hope I did my part to bring more awareness to how common sexual assault can be. Please take care of yourself and others. The hotline for sexual assault will be linked below.
SEXUAL ASSAULT: If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit hotline.rainn.org.