Police seize servers of porn site Motherless in abuse inquiry

Police have raided the hosting company of the pornography website Motherless at locations in Steenbergen, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, seizing servers used by the site, broadcaster NOS has reported.

The public prosecution department is investigating images of possible sexual abuse that appeared on the site, including images of child sexual abuse and of women being assaulted while drugged. Both the people who uploaded the material and the role of the site itself are under investigation, which will be carried out with Europol.

No one has been arrested so far.

Motherless, which had tens of millions of visitors a month, was taken offline by prosecutors in May after reporting by NOS and Nieuwsuur revealed large amounts of illegal material on its servers, hosted by Steenbergen-based provider Nforce. The site later reappeared online via other routes.

The raids are the latest step in a series of Dutch investigations connected to the site. In June, NOS revealed that moderators of the site had themselves posted images of child sexual abuse, with one employee alone uploading 110,000 images.

Earlier, an investigation by CNN had found some 20,000 videos on the site of women being filmed while drugged or asleep, and NRC reported that Dutch users were among those sharing such material.