On Thursday, dozens of Jane Does filed a lawsuit against the online pornography giant Pornhub, characterizing the website as a criminal enterprise that profits off the documented exploitation and abuse of human trafficking victims and children.
The lawsuit accuses MindGeek, Pornhub’s parent company which also oversees several other affiliated brands, of purchasing, laundering, and uploading illegal pornographic content which is often made featuring victims of trafficking or abuse, NBC News reports.
Pornhub is the fifth-most frequently visited website in the world and is thought to be worth as much as $1.69 billion USD.
The over 30 women filing the suit accuse the lucrative enterprise of using illegal content to “become the dominant online pornography company in the world.”
These survivors of sexual exploitation, rape, and trafficking say they were “victimized first by their original abuser, and then repeatedly by the defendants in this case.”
Serena Fleites, one of the women in the suit, told the Canadian House of Commons last year that the exploitation she experienced destroyed her life.
“I’m one of the people who ended up homeless, ended up dropping out of school, ended up on drugs, completely detached from my family. I ended up trying to kill myself many times. I ended up in mental hospitals,” she says.
Pornhub is vehemently denying the accusations made by the lawsuit.
“Pornhub has zero tolerance for illegal content and investigates any complaint or allegation made about content on our platforms,” the company said in a statement. “The allegations in today’s complaint that Pornhub is a criminal enterprise that traffics women and is run like ‘The Sopranos’ are utterly absurd, completely reckless and categorically false.”
They profess to have “the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history, which include the banning of uploads from unverified users, expanding our moderation processes, and cooperating with dozens of non-profit organizations around the world.”
Pornhub banned uploads from unverified users to their website in December after MasterCard and Visa both threatened to ban payments on the platform due to the unsettling frequency with which illegal content was being discovered.
While MasterCard went through with the ban, Visa resumed some payments and is now named as a defendant in the case and accused of knowingly profiting from illegal content.
This is a hugely significant lawsuit — yet serves to underscore how sorely a criminal investigation is needed. Let’s pray that all this wicked website’s crimes come to light and that all those who knowingly raked in money from the sick, despicable abuse and exploitation of Pornhub’s victims is held to account for what they’ve done.
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