Hong Kong
—
“Did you know your videos are leaked?”
The message from an anonymous stranger was how Ms. D, a woman in her 20s, learned her ex-boyfriend had leaked her private photos and intimate videos in a private chat on a Chinese language Telegram channel with more than 100,000 subscribers.
Countless Chinese women, including minors and relatives of the perpetrators, have had their photos and videos posted on the channel. Many have been insulted in the chat, often in explicit ways, according to screenshots provided by Ms. D, who CNN has agreed not to identify for privacy reasons.
The channel – called “Mask Park Treehole Forum” – is only the latest of its kind unearthed over the past decade in East Asia and the world. Many similar, smaller Chinese-language channels are still proliferating on Telegram, a platform which can only be accessed in China through virtual private networks (VPNs).
“I can’t believe how disgusting all this is. It’s like they’re verbally raping (women)… And they’re even fantasizing about their family members,” said Ms. D, who exposed the exploitative channel speaking out on social media late last month, sparking a public outcry over women’s safety both online and offline.
Since then, Chinese women have been working together online to investigate the channel – which has since been disbanded – and share tips on how to report its contents to authorities. Demanding action, some have used slogans like “no investigation, no kids” – a threat to forgo having children as the government struggles to arrest a plummeting birth rate. Women interviewed by CNN reported being shocked, angry and panicked by the revelations.
But weeks of high-profile online campaigns have had limited impact. China’s censorship apparatus appears to have kicked in, taking down Ms. D’s exposés and posts from other campaigners – some are temporarily muted, as screengrabs show – and redirecting searches for “Mask Park” away from the sex exploitation scandal.
Some online investigators say they have received anonymous threats of doxxing and retribution if they continue digging into the Mask Park case, with one such email reviewed by CNN.
While some online users cautiously suggested organizing protests, pointing to similar demonstrations in South Korea last year against deepfake porn, it’s a risky move in China, where coordinated actions to express grievances or dissent are heavily restricted – and often provoke severe repercussions. By August, one of the most popular posts containing a coded reference to a possible protest, with 900 likes, was removed from Chinese social media.
Others have drawn comparisons to a separate South Korean case involving a Telegram channel known as the “Nth Room,” an online sexual blackmail ring that targeted dozens of minors and young women. The perpetrators were eventually jailed and South Korea passed legal reforms strengthening punishments for sex crimes.
But some campaigners say they are pessimistic that the same will happen in China, pointing to the profound societal and political differences between the two countries. China’s stability-obsessed ruling Communist Party views independent activism as a threat and has cracked down hard on campaigns advocating for women’s rights.
So far, Chinese authorities have remained silent on the Mask Park outcry, despite coverage by state-owned news outlets. CNN has reached out to China’s Cyberspace Administration and the Ministry of Public Security, for comment, as well as the All-China Women’s Federation, a state-sponsored organization representing women’s interests.
Private lives filmed and traded by former partners
The stranger who tipped off Ms. D said he had obtained about 20 intimate photos and videos of her, as well as her social media information, from another member – who Ms. D later found out was her ex-boyfriend.
In one group within the channel, her ex had invited others to “exchange” secretly filmed videos of their ex-girlfriends too, the stranger told Ms. D.
While the messenger said Ms. D’s ex didn’t ask for money, many in other similar Telegram groups found by CNN are trading women’s contact details and images, ranging from lifestyle photos on social media to intimate, private videos.
When she confronted her ex-boyfriend, he said he had only shared the explicit material with three people – though she suspects the number is higher. CNN has reviewed the text conversations between Ms. D and her ex.
“When it first happened, I had a mix of feelings,” Ms. D told CNN. “It was so ridiculous … and I was really angry and sad.”
“China’s Nth Room is rampant; any woman could be a victim,” she wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo on July 18, along with screenshots from the channel. “These men use a foreign (platform) that lets them stay anonymous and delete messages, hiding behind their screens to fantasize about women around them… All of this is illegal.”
Pornography is illegal in China, and sexually explicit content is routinely scrubbed from its heavily censored internet.
Ms. D’s post garnered more than 40,000 likes and 20,000 reposts. The next day, she found the channel had closed.
But Mask Park is just one of many similar groups on Telegram, a Dubai-based company that’s known for its high-level encryption and limited oversight of what users post.
CNN discovered at least a dozen other active Chinese Telegram groups where users shared explicit footage and photos of women, including their partners, as well as deepfake porn and images from the social media accounts of female friends and colleagues. Some users bragged about allegedly assaulting or blackmailing women and encouraged others to insult the women shown in photos with degrading language. The largest groups CNN reviewed had over 20,000 members.
When CNN informed Telegram of the groups, they were immediately taken down. Telegram said it “blocks any instance of non-consensual pornography whenever discovered” and that “users found breaching Telegram’s terms are banned.”
When asked how the platform prevents blocked groups from reappearing in new rooms, Telegram said, “Every account on Telegram is tied to a phone number so it is significantly more difficult and expensive to reoffend.”
Chinese women from all walks of life – students, lawyers and some performers – are now urging authorities to take action, warning that Mask Park is indicative of a much larger, more pervasive danger.
“I’ve never seen such a large-scale collective crime before,” said Franny, a 33-year-old female lawyer in the southern metropolis of Shenzhen, who is using an alias for security reasons.
Since the Mask Park case emerged, she has dedicated about six hours a day to investigating the network, pro bono. “I think there are already ample grounds to initiate a criminal investigation in accordance with the law.”
Producing, selling, or disseminating pornographic material for profit is punishable by life in prison. If it’s not for profit, the maximum sentence is two years. If prosecuted, those involved in the Telegram rooms could also face charges of insult and defamation, according to lawyers interviewed by CNN.
But Zhang, a criminal defense lawyer in Beijing, who has asked that CNN identify her by her surname only for security reasons, warned that “closing just one Mask Park doesn’t mean the perpetrators will stop there.”
“Once (they) find their so-called ‘allies,’ this group will grow rapidly … and the wrongdoing within it tends to multiply,” she said. “These individuals might actually far exceed our imagination, both in number and in their methods… I think this is the biggest source of panic for us all.”
Attempts to hold the users to account are complicated by their use of a platform that’s blocked in China. Without solid evidence, it’s very unlikely that Chinese police would open a criminal case, lawyers said, and any further investigation into Telegram voyeur rooms would require cross-border cooperation.
Last September, Telegram announced that it would provide authorities with IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate its rules, in response to “valid legal requests.” This decision followed the arrest of its founder, Pavel Durov, in France over the app’s alleged role in enabling criminal activity, which he has denied.
It’s not clear whether Chinese authorities are already investigating online voyeur rooms. Zhang, the Beijing lawyer, suggested that officials might withhold a report until their investigation is complete. But Franny, the Shenzhen lawyer, argued that a statement “would be a minimal response to the public’s anger over this situation after so many days…It’s about their attitude.”
Chinese police can be slow to investigate explicit images shared on platforms that are legal to access in China, according to a young woman who has been through the process.
Ms. C, a 24-year-old mother who CNN is not naming for privacy reasons, alleged in a viral online video that her ex-husband had leaked nudes from her pregnancy to others on WeChat, a popular messaging app in China.
CNN has reviewed the text conversation between Ms. C and one of the recipients of her leaked images. She said she reported the case to local police twice since May but was brushed off each time for lacking evidence.
Police finally opened a case after her third report in late July, she said, after she noted to officers the popularity of her video, which had amassed nearly 340,000 likes on the social media app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote.
Attitudes in China remain conservative, often to the detriment of women – such as in cases of divorce, domestic violence or upskirting, which aren’t typically treated as a priority by police, rights campaigners have long complained.
Zhou Ninghe, a 29-year-old former auditor turned male campaigner against secret filming, told CNN that he has been tracking and collecting illegally obtained footage since 2022. He said he has called the police a dozen times and filed at least 30 reports to China’s National Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office, according to screenshots of his submission receipts reviewed by CNN. None of them were processed, he said.
CNN has contacted the office for comment.
“It’s so serious that, even as a man – typically someone who can endure a lot – I’ve reached a point where my conscience won’t allow me to overlook it,” said Zhou, who showed CNN screenshots of videos he had discovered online, including hidden cameras in hotels and public restrooms, and what appears to be CCTV footage from ultrasound rooms and wedding dress fitting rooms.
Chinese authorities have previously cracked down on domestic cases of secret filming, such as in March 2022, when the Ministry of Public Security arrested over 860 suspects and confiscated 30,000 illegally operated webcams in an underground network. At the time, the ministry stated it had “strictly punished” the perpetrators “in accordance with the law” – from the manufacturers of covert filming equipment to hidden camera operators and hackers accessing the webcams.
But Zhou said the existing legal punishments are so lenient that they amount to “an implicit condoning” of such behavior.
According to Franny, secret filming doesn’t usually lead to criminal charges in China, unless it includes serious violations of privacy, defamation or other severe consequences.
One upskirting victim, Lydia, caught a man attempting to secretly film under her dress on a street in China’s southwestern Yunnan province two years ago. But after reporting the incident to local police, the 28-year-old said the male officers only gave the perpetrator a verbal warning and told her to be more vigilant in the future.
“The fault doesn’t lie with me; it stems from the entire society’s education of men, or rather, the significant shortcomings in sexual education,” said Lydia, who CNN is identifying by a pseudonym for privacy.
As someone who’s witnessed “the ugly side of some men in this country before,” Lydia said she was not shocked by the Mask Park incident. “The best outcome” she’s expecting is for “women in China to be aware of it and to speak out,” she said.
Still, victims of the channels continue to wait for recognition – even if most of them remain in the shadows. With only Ms. D publicly coming forward so far as a victim of Mask Park, it’s hard to say how many women have unknowingly fallen prey.
“Any (Chinese woman) could be a potential victim,” said Ms. D. “I really don’t want this issue to just fade away.”
