The calls to shut down the ‘Youtube’ of porn – Pornhub – are getting louder, with more than 2 million people signing a petition demanding it be removed.
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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.
The Traffickinghub campaign, founded by Laila Mickelwait and powered by the anti-trafficking organization Exodus Cry, is a non-religious, non-partisan effort to hold the largest porn website in the world accountable for enabling and profiting off of the mass sex-trafficking and exploitation of women and minors.
Back in March, U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, wrote to U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, calling for a federal investigation into Pornhub and its owner MindGeek for their involvement in streaming videos of raped and exploited women and children.
However, there has been no comment from anyone in government, even though it is obvious to all just how dangerous and reckless this site is.
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.
According to the petition, 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.
“Pornhub is generating millions in advertising and membership revenue with 42 billion visits and 6 million videos uploaded per year,” states the petition. “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.
“The campaign, 'Traffickinghub', is based on numerous cases of real videos of child sexual abuse, adult trafficking, assault, and rape, which are all monetized on Pornhub” #Traffickinghub
— Laila Mickelwait (@LailaMickelwait) September 3, 2020
https://t.co/C39EJHEa8Z
“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.
Laila Mickelwait and Traffickinghub.com started this petition to the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. State Department, President of the United States Donald Trump, 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.
