Before I begin this article, an important disclosure is in order: This article—as an expose' of violent content on the Internet—addresses difficult graphic, sexual subject matter. If you have any apprehension about reading this type of content, I strongly advise that you do not continue.
I believe that for the point of this article to be effectively communicated, I have to tell the straight story about what is out there; and while I’m not seeking to offend readers, the reality is that what’s out there is frankly horrific. My initial reason for pursuing this story was simply that, as a parent, I've long been concerned at what I've understood to be available online, and my research has confirmed that there is far more sexual violence easily accessible online than I ever knew. And as a reporter, I feel an obligation to raise awareness as much as possible.
While violent exploitation of woman—on the internet or elsewhere— is certainly not new, the increasingly open availability of this content online speaks to a growing and alarming trend. The door has opened into an industry built upon voyeurism of sexual brutality that seems less and less concerned about remaining in the shadows.
You might think that it’s hard to find the content we’ll discuss. It is not. Any “safety off” Google search of “video” plus whichever sort of sexual cruelty you can imagine will turn up links that will then lead to more and more links, deeper and deeper into the recesses leading to an array of videotaped rape films. It’s a basic search any curious 12 year old could run in 10 minutes or less. (For obvious reasons I am not going to include direct links to the videos mentioned, but I will hold in reserve a list of references should they be requested.) To make matters worse, the website GuardChild reports that the largest group of Internet porn consumers is children ages 12–17, suggesting that it is in part this very age group seeking out this content. [Use of this statistic within the context of this article has been called into question by the founder of GuardChild and has been removed.]
The videotaped rape industry is much larger than most would think, though because it is spread out across many regions and takes on many forms (everything from the blatantly staged to genuine scenes of brutality), it’s difficult to estimate how many videos are online and how big the audience truly is. For the first part of this investigation, I wanted to get a handle on what is out there from a content perspective, and I can safely report that I came across hundreds of such videos at minimum.
There are multiple varieties of these films, and it is not always easy to know in which cases participants are willing (possibly actors) or victims. Some people will always try to make the argument that “it’s all staged.” But from my research, two things are abundantly clear: (1) both simulated and real rape is being videotaped and shown via multiple venues online, and (2) in many of the cases, the women have clearly been tricked into being in these films, and/or were abducted and drugged.
Several of the films originate in Russia and Eastern Europe, evidenced by the languages spoken during the videos and by writing on bottles of alcohol, cigarettes and other items around the rooms. Indeed, it appears that there’s a burgeoning industry of rape films coming from this part of the world, which is by no coincidence a major highway for human sex trafficking.
One common theme in these videos involves two men and a woman drinking and talking in someone’s apartment. At first the banter is loose and friendly, but it’s clear the woman has had too much to drink, and eventually she asks to leave. The men have different plans. At first they verbally cajole her to stay, but when she still resists and tries to push her way towards the door, they begin physically restraining her. At this point they make it quite clear they intend to rape her, and laugh as she tries in vain to get away.
Eventually they subdue her on a bed or couch and strip her clothes from her body as she screams and cries. The men continue to laugh, making jokes between each other the more she resists as if watching her plead for them to stop only adds to their excitement. When she is stripped naked, the men begin taking turns raping her, beginning with oral sex and then multiple penetrations. The videos go on for upwards of 30 minutes.
The men in these videos are considerably older than the girls. One is led to believe that they somehow tricked the girl to be there in the first place—perhaps to film a much different sort of video, perhaps even a far less violent pornographic movie—all the while knowing what they intended to do. By the end, the girl is left sobbing on the floor in the fetal position.
In another variation, two men appear to break into a young woman’s home. As she screams, they throw her onto a kitchen table, pull her jeans and shirt off, and brutally violate her for several minutes. One sexually assaults the victim while the other holds a video recorder to catch the action from every angle.
Another category of these films fall under the general search header, “Two guys and passed out girl.” These films contain videotaped episodes of women who have been drugged, carried to a bedroom, and then repeatedly raped by two or more men who take turns holding a video camera. In many cases it’s clear that those involved were at a party and the men managed to covertly drug the woman and sneak her into another room. There is no question that the women in these videos are passed out – they have absolutely no control over their body movements, no matter how grotesquely violated they are. To make the horrible even worse, the women are invariably raped without condoms.
In this same category are videos of women who are accosted in their bedrooms by men using chloroform handkerchiefs. As a woman lies down to sleep, a man emerges from behind a window curtain or furniture and cups the cloth over her mouth until she passes out. Then another man holding a video camera walks out and they both strip her clothes off and rape her repeatedly while passed out.
The other major geographic region that appears to produce the bulk of these films isSoutheast Asia. Staged sexual assault videos have long come from this part of the world, but the depth and brazenness of the content seems to have increased tenfold in recent years.
Take for example a video that features a janitor who pretends to clean offices after hours, looking for a lone female office employee. When he finds one, he sneaks behind her and subdues her with a chloroform handkerchief. He then pulls out a handheld video camera and rapes her on the office floor. When he’s finished, he puts the victim’s clothes back on and leaves her slumped over her chair.
Another category of Asian rape videos features a beautiful girl who comes to a modeling office under the auspices of competing for a modeling contract. The men who greet her present her with paperwork and an outfit that they say she’ll need to change into for her session. What she doesn’t realize is that the changing room is rigged with a camera to record her changing outfits.
When she comes back to the main room, the men ask that she finish the paperwork and offer her a soda while she does so. The soda is laced with a drug that causes her to pass out. When she wakes, she finds that she has been harnessed to a chair and the two men are holding video cameras. Still semi-drugged, she tries to scream but is so groggy that she can barely focus on what’s happening. The men then begin ripping off her clothes and torturing her with small electronic devices placed in her vagina, all the while laughing at her muted responses. When they have finished torturing her, they remove her from the chair and throw her down on a matted floor, where she is hogtied and repeatedly raped by both men.
Yet a different category of Asian assault videos features a practice known as “Chikan.” In crowded Japanese subway trains, it’s not uncommon for women to be molested by men standing or sitting around them. In recent years, police have cracked down on these crimes (the perpetrators of which are called Chikans), but there is an entire underground fantasy world built around the desire to molest and rape unsuspecting women on trains and buses.
For the most part, these scenes appear to be staged, but they are no less cruel or brutal than any of the other videos so far discussed. Perhaps the women in these videos are being paid and have a general idea of what’s coming, but the fact remains that they are being brutalized and raped on film for anyone to see.
Not infrequently the victims are college -aged or younger. The typical scenario involves a woman getting on a subway train and is immediately circled by two or three men. At first the men’s advances are slow but deliberate, and the victim pushes away their hands. Over time, the advances become increasingly aggressive, until the victim finds herself pushed into a corner of the subway car with multiple men pulling down her skirt and violating her.
In a follow-up article, I want to discuss in more detail why there appears to be such a large audience for these films, why they seem to be multiplying and becoming easier to access, and the forces behind their creation and distribution.
As I mentioned upfront, this isn’t an easy topic, but I think it’s crucial to understand what’s going on here and raise awareness—particularly since children can find any of these videos with minimal effort. The time to do something about this is now.
