Shut Down Pornhub and Hold Its Executives Accountable for Aiding Trafficking

 

Traffickinghub is a decentralized global movement of individuals, survivors, organizations and advocates from across a broad spectrum of political, faith and non-faith, economic, and ideological backgrounds, all uniting together for the single purpose of shutting down Pornhub and holding its executives accountable for enabling, distributing and profiting from rape, child abuse, sex trafficking and criminal image based sexual abuse.

If you have been victimized on Pornhub or any Mindgeek owned website and want help click here. You can stay up to date on the progress of the Traffickinghub petition by following the #Traffickinghub hashtag or by following Laila Mickelwait on Twitter.

In the last few months, there have been several shocking cases of sex trafficking and child rape films that were hosted on Pornhub. A 15-year-old girl who had been missing for a year was finally found after her mother was tipped off that her daughter was being featured in videos on the site — 58 such videos of her rape and sexual abuse were discovered on Pornhub.

Her trafficker, who was seen in the videos raping the child, was identified using surveillance footage of him at a 7-Eleven where he was spotted with his victim. He is now facing a felony charge.

Also in recent news was the case of 22 women who were deceived and coerced by Michael Pratt, owner of GirlsDoPorn, into performing sex acts on film that were subsequently uploaded to Pornhub. These women sued GirlsDoPorn and won a $12.7 million lawsuit against the company. According to a federal indictment, Pratt and his co-conspirators produced filmed child rape and sexual abuse content and trafficked a minor. Pratt reportedly fled the United States for New Zealand and is currently wanted on a federal warrant.

But there are other individuals who should also be wanted by law enforcement — CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo of Mindgeek, the company that owns Pornhub.

You see, Pornhub is complicit in the trafficking of these women and minors and probably thousands more like them.

Pornhub is generating millions in advertising and membership revenue with 42 billion visits and 6 million videos uploaded per year. Yet it has no system in place to verify reliably the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic content it hosts and profits from.

In fact, all that is needed to upload pornography onto Pornhub is an email address. No government-issued ID is required, not even to become “verified” with its trusty blue checkmark that makes everything seem a-OK.

I know this, because I tried it.

It took me under 10 minutes to create a user account and upload blank test content to the site, which went live instantly. I could have then gone on to become Pornhub-verified, and all I would need to do is send a photo of myself holding a paper with my username. That’s it.

It is no surprise that Pornhub admitted to verifying the trafficked 15-year-old girl who was sexually abused in 58 videos on its site. The official Twitter account for Pornhub wrote in response to the breaking story that the 15-year-old girl had been a verified member. After quickly realizing it had just admitted to assisting in her being trafficked, the account deleted the tweets, but the evidence of the admission was cached and still exists.

One of the most-searched terms on Pornhub is “teen” pornography, in fact it has been a top ten search term on the site for six consecutive years. The search will result in videos that are constantly being added faster than any individual could watch them. Many feature girls who look 13 years old at best — girls with braces, pigtails, flat chests, no makeup, extremely young faces, holding teddy bears and licking lollipops, all while being aggressively penetrated. A quick search for the word “teen” turns up titles such as “Young Girl Tricked,” “Innocent Brace Faced Tiny Teen F---ed,” “Tiny Petite Thai Teen,” “Teen Little Girl First Time,” on and on ad infinitum.

Pornhub has no reliable system in place to verify that those in the videos it hosts are not trafficked children being raped on film in order to line the pockets of its executives.

Recently the Internet Watch Foundation stated that it alone had confirmed 118 cases of child rape, sexual abuse and trafficking on Pornhub—half of the videos were Category A level abuse which is the worst kinds of abuse.

What all of this means is that at this very moment, there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of videos of underage sex trafficking victims on Pornhub. We already have evidence, and it is just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s time to shut down super-predator site Pornhub and hold the executives behind it accountable.

Go to www.traffickinghub.com to learn more.

Laila Mickelwait started this petition to the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. State Department, Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Luxembourg Xavier Bettel, Canadian Minister of Justice Sonia LeBel, U.S Congressman Chris Smith, U.S. Congresswoman Ann Wagner, U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, U.S Congressman Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, U.S. Senator Rob Portman, Canadian Attorney General David Lametti.

Victims of Pornhub/Mindgeek in the Media

The Children of Pornhub

Mastercard, Visa and Discover cut ties with Pornhub following allegations of child abuse

Pornhub removes a majority of its videos after investigation reveals child abuse

Lead complainant of class-action lawsuit says her sex abuse as a child was posted on PornHub

In a new lawsuit, more than 30 women accuse Pornhub of profiting from videos posted without their consent

Pornhub sued for allegedly serving nonconsensual sex videos

Pornhub owner settles with Girls Do Porn victims over videos

40 sex trafficking victims sue Pornhub and Mindgeek for 40 million dollars

Victim raped on Pornhub as a 12 yr old files 600 million dollar class action against Pornhub/Mindgeek

Pornhub verified sex trafficker from Alabama who abused 16yr old victim on monetized account

CBC Reports Cases of Underage Victims on Pornhub

Naazir Jackson, 29, from Texas was arrested for sex trafficking his victims on Pornhub

Rose Kalemba, 14yr old raped and videos uploaded to Pornhub for months.

15yr old rape and sex trafficking victim found in 58 Pornhub videos

Pornhub verified 15yr old sex trafficking and rape victim

14yr old victim from Palo Alto, CA raped and videos uploaded to Pornhub

Internet Watch Foundation confirmed 118 cases of child rape on Pornhub

The Sunday Times investigation found "dozens" of illegal abuse videos in "minutes"

Paypal cuts off service to Pornhub amid evidence of child rape and sexual abuse on site

22 sex trafficking victims on Pornhub partner channel GirlsDoPorn

GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking ring a partner channel on Pornhub with 784,000 subscribers US federal indictment for sex trafficking and child pornography

Nicole Addimando of NY sentenced to life in prison after killing attacker who sexually abused her and uploaded videos of her sexual assaults to Pornhub

14 rape victims of Taiwan's Justin Lee had their sexual assaults and rape videos on Pornhub