IHIP News
Former CNN Anchor Breaks Silence on Disturbing Crime Ring Hiding In Plain Sight
09 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What disturbing crime ring is revealed in the episode?
Okay, the following story includes stories of sexual assault that may be triggering for some listeners. An explosive new CNN investigation is pulling back the curtain on what is being called a academy. Let's pop this up. Exposing a global academy and shocking group chats, men encourage one another to drug and assault their wives and swap tips. I'm getting away with it.
And here to discuss this very troubling story with me is Brooke Baldwin. She's an award-winning journalist, top Substack writer and storyteller devoted to truth and transformation. We all loved watching her anchor on CNN. I was obsessed with CNN. I spent so much time with you before today, Brooke. And now she's busy building a platform all on her own in independent media where it's all at.
Let's go, sis. Okay, this is very troubling.
It's incredibly troublesome. I mean, just on so many levels. First of all, just it's so nice to meet you. It's so nice to meet you, too. What a way to like open up a conversation. But let's just dive right in because that's how we roll. Yeah.
Chapter 2: How are men using online forums to facilitate marital rape?
You know, so Saskia Van Dorn is the Paris bureau chief over at CNN. She produced for me when we covered terror attacks in Europe. once upon a time as one does as a journalist. And so when I saw this story and what she explained to me is it had it first came out and I don't think it got as much
as many eyeballs and then something happened and it just went poof and it went viral here in the States. And essentially the story is I, I was, I feel so naive.
I just had no idea that this even existed, where it's like these, a lot of times husbands, partners in the safety of one's home are taking in one woman's case, Zoe Watts, like the child's, you know, sleeping medication, crunching it up into her nighttime tea.
drugging her to be unconscious and then there are these hashtags on these porn websites by the way the website's not the dark web like just broad daylight where it's called like hashtag eye checks where they're like pulling their eyelids up yes so you can see that they're completely or their or their limbs or you know so they're out and then these men are raping their wives and partners and then they're uploading the video to the internet where
millions and millions of people are visiting every month.
That's what I want to talk about the scale of this. The scale of people that viewed this was 60 million.
It was like something like 62. And I know it was 80. Saskia told me it was 80 million visits to this website, motherless.com. And then within that, like there are all these subsections of you know, kink. And like, there is a world of safe and fun kink. And then there's a world of kink that's really crime. And that is what this is. This is rape.
Doesn't matter if you're, you know, if you're unconscious, you're not consenting. It's your husband. You're not consenting. Of course. And so some people, and I say some, like I was talking to a lawyer out of Texas yesterday who actually represented a lot of the young women who were survivors from Larry Nassar. And she was like, Brooke, 98%. of men do not serve time.
And, you know, I was talking to you before we clicked record. My audience, we follow a lot of politics. And this is very much linked to the psychological soil that MAGA and autocrats nationwide are harvesting for us.
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Chapter 3: What shocking statistics are shared about the scale of this crime?
And it is they're promoting a form of toxic masculinity. And they are trying to diminish women's rights and diminish victims' rights. Look at the cover up of the Epstein files.
Yes.
And I wanted just to show how depraved this is. Here is just one screenshot from these group chats. Let's pop this up, Kylie. User one, been wanting to do this to my missus for ages. I can't get blank, but honestly, shit scared of overdose. User two says, always start low. You're thinking long game. So if first time ain't enough, up the dose.
And user three says blank milliliters and a milkshake. She felt nauseous. She gave her, so gave her a tablet of Imodium was blank, did fuck her well, but she was not out enough and had no more blank on me. And so. You interviewed some of these women. Were they aware the next morning?
It's a great question. First of all, just on that screenshot that you showed on these websites, it's not just that they are uploading these videos of rape. but they are coaching one another like man to man, like, hey, this amount of Ambien really worked for me and my wife, like you should try this or what kinds of drugs are you using?
Or there's like ways in which you can procure said sleeping medication to drug drug one's wife. I interviewed Zoe Watts over in England, who had been with her husband for like years and years and years. And she and this other survivor described like, kind of feeling extra groggy.
But you know, as women, we gaslight ourselves totally, we were like, Oh, we have small kids, or we've moved into a new home, or it must just be that I'm exhausted, or I'm exhausted from work, whatever it is, like we would never think. ah, my husband has drugged me and is fucking me unconscious. We would never think that. And so what this story does is like, does what great journalism does.
It's like shining this light into the darkness of like, fuck, like this is actually happening. This is called sleep content on these porn websites.
And when I was talking to an algorithm expert the other day on my sub stack, where it's kind of like the manosphere where it's like a young man jumps on the internet and is like, looks up, you know, great protein shake and four clicks down there in the territory of, you know, Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes. Exactly. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: How do victims often react to their experiences of drug-facilitated rape?
What is sticking with them?
I think it's the fact that, understandably, women, when they find out this is done to them, we don't report it immediately. We're not like, ah, I'm being raped by my husband, let me call police. It's like- Denial. The self-gaslighting, the I don't want to believe it, that I want to protect my family. A lot of these women have little children.
I don't want them to know that their dad is capable of this and did this to me in the one room over. So it's a slow process. And sometimes there's the issues of statute of limitations, but you can file in a civil case. But it just...
i can't even imagine but it just a lot of these women are now on the other side i talked to zoe and this happened to her for like something like 16 years and she didn't know until her then husband fessed up like after church as if he was ticking off a
grocery list and oh by the way i had an affair when you were pregnant and i've been you know raping you except he's like except i've been you know giving you our son sleeping medication and i've been having sex with you and then the man says but at least i'm not cheating on you or i'm not looking at other women on porn as though that that is some kind of justification for this behavior that's what
And to your point about like, just let's like zoom out 30,000 feet. It's like you look at this president. Yeah. You look at the private island and all that happened there and beyond the lack of any kind of consequences or justice other than like the one woman tied to the whole case is the one serving time. You know, it's like it goes on and on and on and on.
Members of Congress behaving badly, this code of silence. And I just hope that through these women speaking up and I know CNN is not done with the story. I've been in touch with Saskia. I'm like, girl, you got to come over here and talk to some American women.
I just think that the more people speak up and out about it, not just about drug induced marital rape, but just sexual assault in general, it just it's like courage is contagious.
I completely agree. And I also want to point out the parallels when I heard this story that I think this type of man that is being promoted with this veneer that they're somehow strong. So if you think about Pete Hegseth, who to me, he reeks of weakness, of insecurity. If you think about Donald Trump, he reeks of weakness and insecurity. If you think about a lot of these men in the cabinet
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Chapter 5: What psychological factors contribute to men's abusive behaviors?
And a lot of the men who watched Me Too happen were like, fuck. And now... i feel this i don't know if you feel this and i'm sitting in this gorgeous soft feminine pink luscious you know studio of yours thank you for that by the way and i think women are feeling more and more in charge embodied permission to exist and men are like whoa whoa whoa Whoa, whoa, whoa.
And in terms of these rapes, it's like, they're like, whoa, when you're unconscious, I'm taking my power back.
about power and control yeah and i think what do you think i think it's about power and control because inherently they feel weak i think pete hegseth feels incredibly weak and emasculated all the time and he thinks where does that come from is that like not to get all we don't know them and we're not therapists but i would guess it goes way back i think it goes way back i think that even his mother had written a letter telling him to straighten up that then she had to rectify on fox news when he was being
I think he's an alcoholic. So it can be addiction. It can be inner childhood trauma. It can be that their dad was the type of dad that say, quit being a pussy. Don't be a sissy. Instead of embracing somebody's emotional character, like I have two sons and it's perfectly fine for men to feel emotions and process their emotions. Feel vulnerable, feel soft. My dad's generation, he's a boomer.
He served in Vietnam and these poor kids, you know, went, my dad was either going to get drafted or he had to sign up to go serve. So he and his friends signed up to go serve in Vietnam. And, you know, always knew something, There was something locked in there. You just kind of know. And it wasn't until last summer, my youngest son had a friend that died unexpectedly.
He drowned right before their senior year. It was just traumatizing. My dad called me and he said, how's Roman doing? That's the name of my youngest son. I said, oh my God, this is so hard. He's grieving. He's really struggling. And my dad opened up to me, Brooke, and he's almost 80. And he said, you know, my best friend and I, we signed up to go serve in Vietnam.
And because we were going to get drafted and we were in combat together and he got shot in front of me. And my dad said to me, I've never told anybody this, but it bothered me. And it sat with me all these years, his friends sitting there bleeding out and men, we put this burden on them. You can't be a pussy. You can't feel feelings. And I told my dad, dad, I wish you would have told somebody.
So we just, we didn't talk about that stuff. So they bury it. And the universal thing is whether you're a man or your woman, your parents are dysfunctional and they're going to fuck you up. There's degrees of dysfunction. You know, there's some degree, like my husband's parents fucked him up or the trauma was really, really bad.
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Chapter 6: How does the media play a role in covering stories of sexual violence?
Mine was moderate. You know, everybody has some, and instead of embracing these things and openly talking about them, we put this burden on men that they have to be tough guys. And particularly in those type, like maybe an uber religious culture, like I think Pete Hegseth is probably a really bad Bible thumper, which is kind of a religious psychosis in my opinion.
And so in this situation, these, you know, there's some, I mean, I think we have to look to Freud. There's some mommy issues. There's some daddy issues. And all of these things are happening at one time. You have the me too. You have.
parody coming yeah men and women the parody is is coming like we've made major progress huge and before they get there this is the final totally it's like as we're making just that leap forward there's always that pull back first sit down in the pullback right totally yeah i totally agree and so i think those all of these things are kind of happening simultaneously and you see the worst
character defects of masculinity on full display not just in the united states you see it in russia you saw it in brazil yes you saw hungary just threw out there and this is the final push and so these journalists and this is why i always tell people i'm not a journalist i'm a commentator because journalism is the gold standard uncovering this and shining a light on this injustice
so that people who have sons and have young men in their lives can talk to them. Also, at the same time, I'm very worried about the unmitigated access youth have to porn.
That's a whole part of this conversation. But I just want to first say, thank you for saying all that. And I'm right there with you, sister. Like I love, I love, uh, I'm from the South too. You know, like I love a good, strong strapping man. I love some vast masculinity and some strength, but I was just saying to my former partner, you know, today on the phone, I was like, I love you vulnerable.
I love you. You know, show me that side of you. I know you're tough. I know you can carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. It takes more strength to show that. Yes.
yes so permission for men to to to be all that they are and i think with porn i think it is so prolific especially with like without we gotta say younger folks but i think it's just everywhere all the time all at once i think the issue with porn too is the algorithm you know it's like i
i'm not a this is my tech impersonation oh you're into this like i'm gonna feed you this and this and this and then it's gonna get even creepier and even creepier and then creepier crawls into the crime and that somehow needs to get fixed and my hope is that good journalists will then through exposing stories like this and through literally crime being uploaded to the internet and thousands of men coaching one another like it i was talking to a therapist and he was saying it's it's it's a lot of it is about belonging i think this
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Chapter 7: What personal stories are shared by the guests regarding their experiences?
But there, I believe, is a push to right now to normalize this, to dehumanize women and to put women back into places where we're not sitting in these spaces doing this. And you recently wrote in your Substack.
and you talked about when you were covering the um uh confirmation hearings of brett kavanaugh who was you know very emotional during his which is fine i have no problem with men being emotional and he was credibly accused and i want you to share this and then if you if you're comfortable yeah i read your substack before you got here because i think there is
liberation and collective healing and making people feel safe enough to share their stories and normalizing the humanity of women. So if you'll kind of share with my listener that journey, because I really thought it was beautiful. If you're comfortable.
I am I think my emotion is coming because I've never spoken about it out loud. And I really am grateful to you the timing of all of this. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. But um, you know, it's it's wild when so I was on I anchored my show on CNN for so so so long and I was hosting my show. It was 2018 when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was testifying.
And I mean, if we remember to that time, like the country came to a standstill. Like, we were wall to wall on this coverage as she was testifying against the then nominee for the Supreme Court. And I just remember, like, at that time, we can all try to think back to 2018 and watching her testify, like, men and women were calling in a C-SPAN, like, you know...
plugging up their phone lines of all these people feeling this need to like share their own story of rape and sexual assault so that was extraordinary it was a time of like belief and memory and owning their stories and so i i had like a 20 something year old producer who worked on my show come into my you know office at that time and shared her story of rape from college i had another producer friend of mine call me up and she wanted to tell me and so i was
honored to be this trusted space. And also really brought up something that I had buried from when I was 21. And so I had written this monologue that I read on my show at the end of one of those days. And I, and I tiptoed just as a journalist does, it was like, I wanted to abide by the rules of journalism, which is you never talk about you never make it about yourself.
So I like tiptoed just up to the edge of telling my full truth. But I there was one pronoun I intentionally avoided. And it was the word I like, I experienced or this was done to me. And I remember feeling emotional at the time.
And people who were paying attention, you can hear when you listen to the clip, you can hear it in my voice, you can hear my tone change, my eyes got just watery, but I didn't want to make it about me, I we got phone calls to CNN PR was Brooke talking about herself. And I was like, I don't want to talk to anyone that's as far as I'm going to go. And I wrote my sub stack this past weekend because
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Chapter 8: What solutions are proposed to address the issues discussed in the episode?
I mean, we both grew up in the South and I think that there is a time now that we have to teach people when they're young what autonomy is. A lot of people where you and I grew up in the Bible, but I didn't grow up religious, but my friends did. And their number one thing was you can't have sex until you're married. So they don't know what consent is.
They just know if something happens, it's their fault. You mentioned this when you spoke about these victims and you wrote this in your sub stack and I thought it was really important. You used the phrase, you gaslight yourself.
which to me is deeper than denial it's intentionally it's almost like dangerous willful denial yeah where you're where you're gaslighting yourself yeah to not feel as a means of self-preservation I would assume yes I mean as I was just coming to you I'll get back to me in a second but I just my you should see my DMS
from women, but also men who have, you know, endured some sort of sexual assault in this. I was just reading this one. This woman has been married to her husband for 52 years and has never shared with him what was done to her when she was 18. And what she is still working with and wrestling with is she said she was so, it happened in silence and she felt so much shame, she didn't wanna scream.
And all these years later, she's still so angry at herself for not screaming all those years ago. So it's like, instead of being so angry at the man who did this to her, she's still working through the anger at herself that she didn't scream. And that's what I'm talking about. Like, I think that's part of why maybe on some subconscious level, I wanted to talk about this.
And even for me, this was 25 years ago and only now, like it wasn't naivety that I didn't come out and talk about it. It was like, we live in this culture, where we're taught that it's really girls and women who are to blame. And that. Yeah. Fuck that. Yeah. And in this self gaslighting, like we have to stop that. And I am guilty.
I think literally from the moment I asked that man to please leave my room. And I was with my friend who is no longer my friend. I'll never forget her sitting with me by the pool. And I was curled up and feeling gross and dirty and what had happened. And I didn't know. And she was like, Oh my God, Brooke, like you could have AIDS. I was like, I could
i didn't even think like how gross and cringeworthy and shamey that was and then i started shaming myself and then i started lashing myself and jen like ask any man i've dated like i'm a strong woman i know how to not know as a full sentence and also i lashed the out of myself
and i as i was writing my sub stack realized oh my god did that start because of that day because of what was done to me and i think a lot of women we're so tough on ourselves and even when it comes to like sexual violence being done to our body we're like we excuse it away or we gaslight it away or we're just to ourselves and we have to stop that
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