Armelle Le Bigot-Macaux, president of the ACPE association (Agir Against Child Prostitution and Sexual Violence) reacts to the closure of the site coco.gg, hosted on the island of Guernsey and known for its pimping activities. A step forward in child protection, in the face of the uberization of sexual exploitation which makes it “accessible and in broad daylight”, she explains.
On June 25, 2024, the ACPE association learned of the closure of the Coco.gg site. Coco.gg is (it was!) an unfortunate element of the daily life of any association fighting against the sexual exploitation of minors… Engaged in this fight since 1986, we heard about this website according to our constitutions as a civil party and through support for victims, their loved ones and child professionals. Constantly, the mention of this site and, with each new story, the observation of child crime that is incredibly accessible and in broad daylight.
Sexual exploitation transformed by Uberization
The classic story among many others: a 14-year-old girl, approached by a 35-year-old adult in a public place, was offered a party and illicit substances. She naively followed him and after a few hours, was informed that she had consumed heavily and therefore owed them money. A simple contact on coco.gg
by his now pimps, and the first “clients” were there within an hour.
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With the development of digital technology, the sexual exploitation of minors has in fact undergone a gradual metamorphosis; laborious and time-consuming at first, setting up sexual exploitation now only requires a few clicks.
In our community, we are talking about a phenomenon of “Uberization”. Coco was the prime example. We demonstrated it to alert during our training, provided for childcare professionals: a name, a postal code and, without doing anything more, dozens of requests of a sexual nature which appeared in a few minutes, carried by nicknames with telling names, without any moderation. Suggesting our minority in our nickname, or indicating it in response did not limit the proposals, quite the contrary…
The web, the new hotbed of pimping
So why didn’t this site disappear before? The registration was in Guernsey, the company in Bulgaria, the servers scattered across Europe… it took significant European cooperation from law enforcement to achieve this closure, historic for us. We are aware that putting out this fire does not make it possible to eliminate the child criminals who used it and that the web is full of other such platforms. The prosecution of perpetrators of recourse to prostitution of minors and therefore rapists, is another fight that we are waging.
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By filing a complaint today, however, we hope that the classification of pimping will be retained against this website and against the individual behind it. Let the media coverage of a pimping site be the first step in making the digital world more responsible, so that these centers of child crime can no longer exist in broad daylight. May Coco, which served as an example of the worst that can exist in terms of accessible child crime, become through its closure our example of the best that can exist in terms of prosecution and progress in protection from childhood.
