11 March 2020. Pornhub and its Canadian owner MindGeek should face a US federal investigation over allegations they hosted videos depicting the rape and sexual exploitation of trafficked women and children, Republican Senator Ben Sasse has said.
In a letter sent to the US Department of Justice on Monday, Sasse noted several cases in which the website, which clocked up 42 billion visits last year, had made content available in which vulnerable trafficking victims could be seen being abused.
Sasse quoted one example in which the mother of a missing 15-year-old girl discovered that videos featuring the rape and sexual assault of her daughter had been uploaded to the website.
Christopher Johnson, the victim’s trafficker, filmed himself raping the teenager before adding the resultant footage to Pornhub.
After forcing the girl to have an abortion, Johnson was arrested in Florida when police matched his appearance in some of the videos and linked it with CCTV footage.
Sasse also highlighted the case of the owners of porn sites GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys, who were charged with sex trafficking offences after they conned young woman into appearing in adult films on false pretenses before uploading the footage to Pornhub without the victims’ permission.
“The problem of Pornhub streaming content featuring women and children victims of sex trafficking reached the point in November that PayPal cut off services for Pornhub, refusing to facilitate this abuse any longer,” Sasse wrote.
“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 disturbing pipeline of exploiting children and other victims and survivors of sex trafficking.”
Last month, US women’s rights group Exodus Cry posted a petition on Change.org calling for Pornhub to be closed down after it hosted videos featuring sex trafficking victims and child sexual exploitation.
The petition has so far attracted almost 440,000 signatures.