21/04/2026
This is why I’ve been posting about becoming the bear today
I’ve spent decades working with women & men. And this week, something landed that I can’t scroll past. However it is being mis reported.
There were not 62 million men accessing, that number represents traffic rather than how many people. It’s not one website, rather a collection. The original version is in here https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cnn-online-r**e-academy/
It’s also available on Apple podcast.
Numbers of sites& people accessing are still mind blowing.
CNN has exposed what they’re calling a “r**e academy.” Not a metaphor. A structured, global online network where men gather to encourage each other to drug, record, and s*xually assault their wives and partners — and share it for the entertainment of others.
Let that settle.
Not strangers. Wives. Partners. Women who trusted them.
That detail matters enormously. This is betrayal trauma at its most profound. These women had no reason to defend against the threat sleeping next to them.
Here’s what I need you to understand as a clinician and as a woman. This isn’t a collection of isolated monsters. That framing is emotionally satisfying but dangerously incomplete.
These sites are not fun consensual role playing between partners - that distinction counts. All fantasies, role playing between CONSENTING adults is natural, normal, fun, playful….
Organised abuse circles are not!
What CNN exposed is organised deviation. And organised deviation scales.
Investigations have found small but organised groups of offenders online—typically in the hundreds or thousands—while the broader exposure to harmful content can reach much larger audiences. There is no verified figure showing millions of men participating in these groups.
Are people having difficulty differentiating between fantasy & reality? How are they using the information on these sites? Are there only men accessing this site? I know most people would assume only men, however, this may not be the case in reality.
These spaces work through predictable psychological mechanics:
Normalisation. You enter. You see everyone treating this as acceptable. The brain adjusts — faster than any of us want to admit.
Desensitisation. Repeated exposure erodes shock. What was disturbing becomes tolerable, then interesting, then just… normal.
Identity formation. It stops being behaviour. It becomes who they are. Group identity is one of the most powerful forces in human psychology.
Escalation pressure. These networks don’t reward restraint. They reward more. More extreme. More proof. More commitment. So it ramps.
The internet solved three problems for men like this:
Anonymity removed social consequence. Access connected them globally. Validation loops replaced moral boundaries with group approval.
Before the internet, this person was isolated. Now he finds a thousand others in minutes.
This is not about s*x.
It is about power, control, domination, and the complete dismantling of empathy. (Which is also ok within a consensual container) S*x is just the delivery mechanism.
What I’ve been posting about this week , the
the patterns, the red flags — this is why.
Because the women in these situations were not naive. They were not careless. They were simply operating on a reasonable human assumption:
Proximity means safety.
It doesn’t. Not always. And that is a devastating thing to sit with.
So what do we do with this?
We don’t look away. We don’t comfort ourselves with “that could never happen to me.” We get educated, we get clear-eyed, and we talk about it — loudly, professionally, and without apology.
Healthy relationships increase safety, transparency, and trust.
Anything moving in the opposite direction, secrecy, isolation, escalation, dehumanisation is not edgy or misunderstood.
It’s risky territory, perhaps dangerous.
If any of this resonates, or if something in your own life feels like it’s moving in the wrong direction, my door is open.
Because your safety is not negotiable. Ever.
*xualViolence
*xualabuse
