Inside the social media app Telegram, thousands of men are allegedly participating in what reports call “rape chat groups” where they share stories of assaulting women as well as instructions for others to do the same.
According to a report in The Telegraph, this information was revealed through a year-long investigation by German broadcaster ARD and its STRG_F investigative team. This investigation found that users posted links to stores where they could buy sedatives disguised as hair products.
Substances used to drug victims can have serious health impacts. For example, Audacy reported this week on a woman who experienced seizures and intubation after suspected poisoning with antifreeze.
Telegram was founded by billionaire Pavel Durov of Russia in 2013. Forbes reported that he has five children with two ex-girlfriends and has claimed to have fathered more than 100 children via sperm donation.
The Telegraph noted that Telegram has been used by criminals due the company’s refusal to share data with government agencies. It was banned in Russia from 2018 through 2021, according to Forbes.
Last August Durov – who became a French citizen in 2021 – was arrested in Paris. He was charged with failing to address the distribution of illicit content but has denied the allegations. In September, the BBC reported that Telegram has said it will hand over user IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities who have search warrants or other valid legal requests. Durov said in a Telegram post that the change should discourage criminals.
“While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk,” he said. Durov remained under house arrest in Paris as of December, The Telegraph reported.
“The prevalence of child abuse content on apps such as Telegram has led to calls in Germany for the police to be given more powers to locate the IP addresses of people acting anonymously online,” said the outlet.
“Investigators in Germany said they have had some success in recent years in convincing Telegram to share information connected to probes into terrorism and child sex abuse content,” The Telegraph also said.
By July 2024, Telegram had more than 950 million users, Newsweek reported last September. At the time of that report, around 29.9 million downloads had been reported in the U.S.
Per the German report, the “rape chat groups” on the messaging app have as many as 70,000 members who mostly communicate in English. Some posted photos and live video of assaults on women, The Telegraph said.
“In one instance, a German man said he would sedate his wife and offered her to other users,” said the outlet.
According to The Telegraph, Telegram said this in a statement: “Telegram has a zero-tolerance policy towards misuse of its platform. All users caught doing so will be blocked immediately.”
This November, the Council on Foreign Relations covered a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) that found that digital hate and harassment against women rose rapidly after the U.S. presidential election. Hate speech against women included phrases such as “repeal the 19th [Amendment]” and “get back to the kitchen” as well as “your body, my choice,” in response to the reproductive justice movement’s slogan, “my body, my choice.”
In the U.S., the Evidence-based Measures of Empowerment for Research on Gender Equality (EMERGE) group has called for social media companies to include misogyny, misogynoir, and transmisogyny in their hate speech rules, “given its well-documented connections to gun violence and other extremist acts.”