
Southport killer Axel Rudakubana’s descent into hate and the rapes of Gisèle Pelicot were facilitated by some horrific parts of the online world.
Read what I have to say on this, in my latest column, published in today's Scotsman (4th February 2025).
At first sight, there’s not much to connect two of the most horrific crimes of the past year. The repeated rapes of an unconscious woman, Gisèle Pelicot, by a large group of seemingly unconnected men, were organised by the victim’s husband. This was a bizarre and brutal series of crimes, and very different from the horrific Southport attacks, carried out by a lone, hate-filled teenager with a knife.
But look closer and there is one important connection: both crimes were aided and abetted by the internet.
The Pelicot rapes were facilitated by a private website on the Dark Web, part of the internet not accessible through normal search engines but only via specific software. The site in question featured ‘Sleeping Beauty’ fantasies, focussing on men having sex with unconscious women.
During the trial of Dominique Pelicot and his 50 co-accused, it became clear that this website had been key to the mass rapes. Not only did the guilty men meet there but the graphic videos of the numerous assaults were intended to be posted back on the site so as to satiate viewers and perhaps encourage more rapes.
Quite simply, had this site not existed, the mass rape of Gisèle Pelicot would not have taken place.

There are few positives to take from this case apart from the astonishing courage of the victim and the thorough investigation by the French police. The website has reportedly been cited in more than 23,000 reports of criminal activity and its founder has been arrested.
But Dominique Pelicot’s crimes were only uncovered when he was arrested for an unconnected indecent act, and the case poses some sobering questions. How many more sites like this one exist and how many other groups of offenders are being facilitated in their crimes? The truth is that we do not know and until the Dark Web is brought under control, we can only guess and fear.
Though the horrific Southport murders were very different, the man responsible, Axel Rudakubana, had also been both stimulated and facilitated by the internet. Much has been made of Rudakubana’s status as a ‘terrorist’ but in truth he does not fill the usual definition.
He was not driven by an ideology as much as hate. His profile is more like many of the American school shooters than terrorists. An isolated and disturbed youth, he retreated to violent fantasies on the internet, then set out to vent his rage on the world.
A valuable servant, a cruel master
From the sketchy information available, it would appear his parents tried to stop him being violent and probably denied him access to kitchen knives, hence his need to order weapons online.
After both these awful cases, we should think about how they could have been avoided and what systems we could develop to protect ourselves from internet-assisted criminality of all sorts.
As social media impacts on more areas of our lives and as artificial intelligence grows more powerful, we have no time to lose. The marvels of the internet can be a valuable servant or a cruel master. It’s up to us to decide.
My Scotsman article can also be viewed by clicking here.
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