Nearly a year after her daughter went missing, the mother of a 15-year-old was notified by a friend that pornographic photographs and videos of her missing daughter had begun to appear online. Her daughter was alive and being trafficked and abused by a man twice her age. The discovery led to the child’s rescue, but not before her abuser impregnated her and forced her to have an abortion and had uploaded 58 separate videos of her being raped and abused onto Pornhub to be consumed for other people’s sexual enjoyment.
When the news of her exploitation and rescue first broke, Pornhub tweeted that the victim had been a verified user, before quickly deleting the tweet when they realized that they had admitted to being complicit in her abuse. Their attempt to save face does nothing to change the fact that this is not an isolated incident. Other abuse survivors have come forward to point out Pornhub’s role in perpetuating their suffering, and a recent lawsuit exposed and shut down a popular channel featured on Pornhub that was illegally produced by means of coercion and deception. Even after the settlement, Pornhub has continued to circulate the videos.
On Monday, Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr calling on the Justice Department to investigate PornHub for its role in perpetuating and enabling the sex trafficking industry. His letter points out that there have been multiple instances in the past year in which Pornhub distributed footage of women and children who were trafficked and raped, prompting PayPal to end their relationship, refusing to continue to be complicit in Pornhub’s abuse. He also notes that Pornhub has bragged that every nine minutes, an entire day’s worth of content is uploaded to their site. “In light of this data,” Sasse writes,
[T]hese publicized cases clearly represent just the tip of the iceberg of women and children being exploited in videos on Pornhub. I applaud the actions that the department has already undertaken under your leadership on this issue, but Pornhub must not escape scrutiny. I therefore request that the Department open an investigation into Pornhub and its parent entity MindGeek Holding SARL for their involvement in this distributing pipeline of exploiting children and other victims and survivors of sex trafficking.
The Washington Examiner has noted that “teen” is one of the most-searched terms on Pornhub. Although the website claims that they have a “steadfast commitment” to fighting illegal and sexually abusive content, their “comprehensive safeguards” are easily circumvented, and more than one survivor has documented that Pornhub refused to remove content, dismissing pleas from minors until the young women either hired or posed as lawyers. Laila Mickelwait of Exodus Cry has also pointed out how easy it is to become a verified user, something that has been exploited by abusers. Pornhub profits from trafficking, rape, and abuse, and this is utterly unacceptable.
Back in December, four members of Congress called on the Department of Justice to address the spread of online pornography by enforcing obscenity laws. As more of the truth about Pornhub comes out, the more evident it becomes that action must be taken to confront this exploitative industry.
Pornography is never victimless. It fuels a human trafficking pipeline that wreaks havoc on the lives of its victims, and even when the actors “consent” to these videos, pornography mistreats and commodifies human beings who are created in the image of God. Tragically, barely over half of the adults over 25 in the U.S. believe that pornography is wrong, and less than half of America’s teenagers believe that it harms society.
The Department of Justice must investigate Pornhub. Failure to do so would be a grave injustice to the victims of this appalling industry. Just as importantly, each of us must recognize in our own lives that we must “be killing sin or it will be killing [us],” and we must speak up in our communities about the devastating effects of pornography. Even if it is uncomfortable or awkward, we have to be willing to point out that pornography is never harmless, is never “just for fun.”
