The founder of the website used by Dominique Pelicot to invite dozens of men to rape his wife after drugging her was indicted Thursday in France on myriad charges, including some linked to that case.
If found guilty, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 7.5 million euros, or about $7.7 million.
The site’s founder, Isaac Steidl, 44, was released from prison Thursday. The investigating judge’s office said he was placed under “judicial control”, had to pay bail of 100,000 euros and was barred from leaving France.
The website he created in 2003, called coco.fr, became famous in France during the trial of Mr Pelicot and 50 other men, who were all found guilty last month, mainly of raping his now ex-wife of Mr. Pelicot, Gisèle, while she was heavily sedated.
One of the charges against Mr. Steidl related to the Pelicot case is that he operated an online platform to enable an illicit transaction by an organized gang. Among the other charges against him are complicity in drug trafficking, complicity in the possession and distribution of child pornography, aggravated exploitation of prostitution and aggravated money laundering.
Mr. Steidl “firmly denies the accusations made against him and undertakes to cooperate fully to demonstrate his lack of responsibility for the alleged crimes,” his lawyer, Julien Zanatta, told Agence France-Presse.
During the trial, Mr Pelicot said he met all the men in a private chat room on the site called “Without His Knowing”. Most of the defendants who were denied had ever seen that particular chat room.
They agreed, however, to meet him on site, and then moved the conversation to text or Skype to arrange a visit to the Pelicots’ home in the south of France, where they joined him in raping his ex-wife while she was in a profound state. junkie.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement that the site was implicated in more than 23,000 cases in France alone from 2021 to 2024, involving 480 alleged victims. The cases included allegations of child sexual abuse, pimping, rape, drug trafficking, fraud and murder, police and prosecutors said in a statement.
The site was shut down in June after an 18-month investigation that spanned across Europe. Police froze bank accounts in Hungary, Lithuania, Germany and the Netherlands and seized 5 million euros, the Paris prosecutor said at the time.
During the operation, Mr Steidl’s home in Bulgaria was searched at the request of French judges, the prosecutor’s office said.
Mr. Steidl grew up in the southern French province of Var. In April 2023, the French government granted his request to renounce his French citizenship. Last June, after the closure of his site, he was interviewed by an investigating judge in Bulgaria, in the presence of French law enforcement.
French non-profit organizations fighting against child abuse, homophobia and illegal online content have been raising alarms about the site for years. A petition calling for its closure has been signed by more than 20,000 people.
“The Coco site was a den of pedophiles,” said Sophie Antoine, who works on legal issues and advocacy for the French organization Act Against the Prostitution of Children.
Ms Antoine said her organization often used it to show childcare professionals “how the ‘dark web’ is really out in the open”. Registration was free and only required your name, age and zip code. Once you logged in, other users could contact you to chat and make proposals, but once you logged out, those chats were immediately deleted, he said.