A troubling online phenomenon known as “sleep porn” is attracting attention, largely due to a controversial website called Motherless.

Allegations suggest that Motherless hosts videos where individuals share footage of drugging and assaulting their partners. They reportedly also exchange tips on executing such acts. In February, the site reportedly received 62 million visits, predominantly from users in the United States, according to a report by CNN.

The media outlet Oxygen attempted to contact Motherless for a statement through a contact form and a lawyer who has previously represented the site, but received no response. Motherless also did not respond to CNN’s inquiries regarding their investigative findings.

What is Motherless? 

Motherless describes itself as “a moral free file host where anything legal is hosted forever,” as stated in its tagline. However, CNN reports that the site hosts over 20,000 videos tagged with terms like #passout and #eyecheck, featuring unconscious women in what is termed “sleep” content.

These “sleep porn” videos allegedly include scenes of sexual abuse, with men demonstrating the women’s unconsciousness by lifting their eyelids. Some videos even provide instructions on how to drug women, as detailed in CNN’s report.

This site is part of a larger network that French legislator Sandrine Josso compares to “an online rape academy.” Having been drugged by a former senator, Josso is now an advocate for raising awareness about drug-facilitated sexual assault. She remarked to CNN, “There are all the ‘subjects’ and ‘disciplines’ needed to become a good rapist or sexual predator.”

While investigating Motherless, CNN reporters also discovered “Zzz,” a group on the message app Telegram, when a site user linked out to the platform. There, users allegedly posted similar sleep porn videos.

“Zzz” has since been removed from Telegram.

As a company spokesperson told CNN, content that “encourages sexual violence is explicitly forbidden” and “removed whenever discovered.”

“Moderators empowered with custom AI tools proactively monitor public parts of the app and accept reports in order to ban accounts breaching our terms of service and remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day,” the statement said, “including content that calls for sexual violence.”   

Meanwhile, Motherless’ parent company Kick Online Entertainment S.A was previously investigated by the UK service regulator Ofcom for allegedly not providing “suitable and sufficient illegal content risk assessment,” per CNN. However, the investigation was later closed when the company provided the necessary paperwork. 

Ofcom told CNN that its purpose was “not to tell platforms which specific content to take down and that the responsibility falls to platforms to decide whether content is illegal.”