Founder of website used by Gisèle Pelicot’s ex-husband charged
French prosecutors have connected Coco.fr to more than 23,000 criminal cases, includin ‘paedophilia, pimping, prostitution, rape, sale of narcotics, ambushes, and even homicides’
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Your support makes all the difference.Prosecutors in France have charged the founder of the website used by the ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot to arrange for strangers to rape her while she was unconscious.
Dominique Pelicot, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison last month, used the site Coco.fr to post adverts in order to recruit more than 80 men to rape his wife over a period of nearly 10 years.
Isaac Steidl, who originally set up the site in 2003 as a dating platform, flew back to France from his home in eastern Europe on Tuesday to be interviewed by police in Paris. He was charged on Thursday for offences relating to facilitating illegal transactions.
The Paris prosecutor’s office told AFP that Mr Steidl’s site “had been used to commit numerous offences, in particular those judged in the so-called Pelicot case.”
Coco.fr was shut down in June 2024 after prosecutors claimed it was connected to more than 23,000 criminal cases and used as a “facilitator for acts of paedophilia, pimping, prostitution, rape, sale of narcotics, ambushes, and even homicides”.
One criminal investigation invovled a 22-year-old man who was beaten to death in northern France after he allegedly used the site to meet with someone he believed to be a girl under the age of 18.
Mr Steidl, 44, faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros if found guilty of providing “an online platform to enable illicit transactions”, according to the Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau.
He is also being questioned on allegations of “the unlawful administration of an online platform as part of a criminal organisation, criminal conspiracy and complicity in offences and crimes related to aggravated procuring, the distribution and sharing of pedophile videos and money laundering”.
Ms Beccuau said that €5 million euros had been seized from bank accounts associated with the site.
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