One Million People Sign Petition to Shut Down Pornhub for Alleged Sex Trafficking Videos
TellFinder Automates Identification of
NEWS PROVIDED BY Exodus Cry
Fast Growing Global #Traffickinghub Movement, Now One Million Strong, Wants Pornhub Shut Down for Alleged Sex Trafficking Videos
SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 9, 2020 /CNW/ -- With signers from 192 countries, anti-trafficking expert Laila Mickelwait's "Traffickinghub" petition to shut down Pornhub for allegedly enabling and profiting from the sex trafficking and rape of women and children on the site has surpassed one million signatures.
The campaign is powered by the anti-trafficking organization Exodus Cry and is based on numerous alleged cases reported in recent media of videos of alleged child rape and sex trafficking on the site. The campaign has been endorsed by over 300 anti-trafficking, child protection, and women's rights organizations in the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, Europe, and Latin America. It has also been featured in hundreds of media articles both nationally and internationally, and inspired a large protest in front of the website's main office in Montreal, Canada on International Women's Day.
Traffickinghub.com (PRNewsfoto/Exodus Cry)
The campaign has compelled legislators in Canada and the United States to call for federal level investigations into Pornhub's parent company MindGeek. Inspired by the petition, U.S. Senator Ben Sasse released a letter to attorney general William Barr, demanding that the U.S. Department of Justice open an investigation into Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek. A multi-party group of Canadian members of parliament also sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, asking the Government of Canada to investigate Pornhub and MindGeek.
The non-religious, non-partisan campaign to shuttter the world's largest porn site for allegedly hosting videos of the rape and trafficking of women and children has even drawn support from porn professionals in the adult entertainment industry, who released a manifesto and a change.org petition rejecting the website and its parent company MindGeek.
Olga Person, the president of Unizon Sweden said, "Pornhub is profiting from and enabling violence, rape, sex trafficking and the exploitation of women and children and must be held accountable. To achieve true equality, we must ensure that all women and girls live their lives free from violence and exploitation. This can only be possible if no woman or girl, or any human being, is trafficked or exploited in the sex trade and pornography industry. Unizon is a Swedish association of over 140 women's shelters, young women's empowerment centres and other support services working together for a gender equal society free from violence. Pornhub is the total opposite to a gender equal society free from violence."
Kate Isaacs, the founder of the UK-based organization #NotYourPorn said, "MindGeek, owners of Pornhub, have proven themselves to ignore the blatant non-consensual abuse content they have on their site. Their lack of moderation and irresponsible practices have allowed the platform to be littered with non-consensual and underaged content. We will continue to work with victims in the UK and across the world to ensure Pornhub no longer profits from their trauma. External regulation needs to be enforced by governments to send a clear message; clean up Pornhub or shut it down."
Vanessa Morse, CEO of the UK Centre for the End of All Sexual Exploitation noted, "Pornhub's executives turn a blind eye to the scores of illegal and abusive videos they host and promote, for the sole purpose of corporate profit. Pornhub is profoundly complicit in child sexual exploitation and sex trafficking."
The grassroots global movement to shut down the world's largest porn site was sparked by the February 9 release of an op-ed, written by campaign founder Laila Mickelwait, exposing the issue and calling for justice. The following day, the BBC published the harrowing story of Rose Kalemba who, at 14 years old, was taken at knifepoint and raped for 12 hours, after which the videos of her torture were uploaded to Pornhub by her attackers. She says she begged Pornhub to remove the videos for six months but it was not until she posed as a lawyer and threatened legal action that Pornhub finally removed them.
"All it takes to upload content to Pornhub is an email address—no government-issued ID is required. Pornhub doesn't bother to reliably verify the age or the consent of the millions featured in the videos it hosts and profits from, yet it monetizes those videos with no questions asked. The site is set up for exploitation and is infested with videos of the real rape, trafficking, abuse, and exploitation of women and children. We have evidence and it is just the tip of the iceberg," asserts Mickelwait. "Shut it down."
The full story, along with a way to sign the petition, is available at traffickinghub.com. For up-to-the-minute updates on the progress of the campaign, follow Laila Mickelwait on Twitter.
For further information: Laila Mickelwait, Exodus Cry/Traffickinghub, lailamickelwait@traffickinghub.com, (720) 515-7406, http://www.exoduscry.com
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Child Sexual Abuse Material
Issuewire
(WorldFrontNews Editorial):- Toronto, – TellFinder Alliance, in response to the increased presence of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) appearing in online commercial sex advertisements, has created new tools for TellFinder users to identify and report these images to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline in seconds.
The District Attorney of New York co-founded TellFinder Alliance in 2018. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. has established the District Attorney’s Office as a national leader in criminal justice by expanding its expertise on an array of 21st-century crimes and funding innovative tools and partnerships to address those crimes. TellFinder is a web platform that connects its users to the transitory data of the deep web where human trafficking and other crimes flourish.
TellFinder Alliance identified the potential benefit of TellFinder to locate and recover missing and exploited children and donated access to this tool to NCMEC. Since that time NCMEC analysts have been using the tool to support the recovery of missing children being exploited through sex trafficking.
In 2019, NCMEC approached the TellFinder team to discuss how to rapidly flag and report CSAM on their platform. A new process was urgently needed to achieve two things: utilize CSAM images to find missing and exploited children, but also remove these same images from the internet. For Chris Dickson, Director, Research Engineering at Uncharted Software and lead TellFinder developer, the solution was to design automation tools that would help NCMEC analysts, the TellFinder team, and law enforcement investigators. Dickson and his team enhanced TellFinder to provide automatic reporting of CSAM to NCMEC’s CyberTipline.
“Not only do these images document crimes being committed against children, but when they are shared online, child victims continue to be victimized each time the image of their sexual abuse is viewed,” said Tiffany Henderson, Supervisor of the Child Sex Trafficking Team at NCMEC. “Adding this automation to the TellFinder tool will help decrease the circulation of these images and protect children from this re-victimization.”
U.S. federal law requires that U.S.-based electronic service providers (ESPs) report instances of apparent child sexual abuse material that they become aware of on their systems to NCMEC’s CyberTipline. NCMEC staff review content reported to the CyberTipline and then the reports are made available to law enforcement for their independent review. According to Dickson, “It’s about ensuring our users and analysts have the tools at their fingertips to report things like this. This is stuff you hope to never come across, but it’s there. You want to make the steps required to deal with it as seamless and simple as possible. Filing a report through TellFinder takes seconds and puts that information directly into the hands of professionals that know how best to handle the situation.”
The automation tools could not have been developed at a better time. In March and April of 2020, NCMEC reported seeing an increase of nearly 5 million CyberTipline reports in comparison to the same period in 2019. There were several child sexual abuse videos that went “viral” during this time and contributed to the increase, but NCMEC has also observed some increased vulnerability for children as more time is spent online during the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.
There is more on this story at World Front News
Now the question is, can NCMEC handle the increase in reports?
EU plans to step up fight against child sex abuse
By AFP
The European Union is set to unveil a package of measures to better combat child sex abuse after online demand for illegal content involving minors soared during the coronavirus lockdowns, an EU commissioner said Sunday.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told Germany’s Die Welt daily that she wanted to lead “a more efficient fight” against the scourge of child abuse, including through closer cooperation with social media companies.
“Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for material showing the sexual abuse of children has risen by 30 percent in some member states,” she said in comments translated into German.
The new plan, which Johansson said would be presented “soon”, would include the creation of a new EU centre to help member states “investigate, prevent and combat child sex abuse” and facilitate cross-border information sharing.
She also called for tougher action against perpetrators.
“We need prevention strategies but we can’t rely on that alone,” Johansson said. “We also need to enforce our laws when they are broken and show that our values prevail, both on the internet and in real life.”
Child sex abuse on the internet is real life for the child!
The internet is “sadly a decisive factor” for potential perpetrators looking for victims, she added, underscoring that more cooperation with internet companies was needed.
Experts have repeatedly sounded the alarm about vulnerable children forced to stay indoors for much of the past few months as part of efforts to halt the coronavirus, potentially trapping them with their abusers and cutting them off from outside help.
There has also been concern that the millions of children spending more time online are at greater risk of being groomed on the internet by paedophiles.
The urgency of the problem was highlighted again when German police on Saturday said they had detained 11 people accused of being part of a paedophile ring and filming their actions.
Officers seized hard disks containing up to 500 terabytes of data, including videos and photos, from the cellar of one of the suspects, a 27-year-old man from the western city of Muenster.
Investigators have identified at least three potential victims aged five, 10 and 12 years old.
Better support for Aussie sexual abuse victims under new training for first responders
Monash University
A new federal grant awarded to Monash University will improve the way frontline workers and health professionals respond to victims of sexual violence.
The Minister for Families and Social Services, Senator the Hon. Anne Ruston, today announced the awarding of $4.5 million to Monash University for the development of an accredited training program for sexual violence responses under the Department of Social Services’ National Initiatives Program.
“When someone makes the brave and difficult decision to disclose they have experienced sexual violence it is vital that disclosure is handled with care,” Minister Ruston said.
“This investment will ensure that frontline workers receive the training they need to make sure they can best support people who have experienced sexual violence no matter where they are or how they are seeking help.”
Monash University’s Department of Forensic Medicine (DFM) will lead a consortium of agencies over three years to develop and trial practical training for health professionals and frontline workers. The training will enhance the recognition and response to disclosures of sexual violence.
With one in five Australian women experiencing sexual violence from the age of 15, Department of Forensic Medicine Head, Associate Professor Richard Bassed, said it was critical that frontline workers and health professionals know how to safely and appropriately respond when faced with disclosures of sexual violence or harmful behaviours.
“Improving frontline worker understanding of all forms of sexual violence and their ability to respond safely to disclosures, understand referral points and support victims is essential to improving community outcomes and reducing rates of violence,” Associate Professor Bassed said.
“Importantly participants will also be trained with the skills required to reduce further victimisation and re-traumatisation.”
The Department of Forensic Medicine will partner with specialist medical staff from the Melbourne-based Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM).
Consultation will be undertaken with agencies likely to receive disclosures from adult and child victims of sexual assault and with communities known to have increased vulnerability to sexual assault, to better understand their needs and circumstances.
“Our practice-based understanding will inform the development of training and related tools to assist in early intervention and trauma-aware care for individuals who have experienced sexual assault,” Associate Professor Bassed said.
Course participants will learn how to identify risk factors for sexual violence and how to elicit and respond to disclosures in culturally sensitive and appropriate ways. They will develop an understanding of referral pathways, protective support services and justice options. Each module will be supported with practical guidelines and assessment tools.
Bill enabling life sentence for paedophiles
set to pass Aussie parliament
Attorney-General Christian Porter. Source: AAP
Labor has flagged it will work with the government to stamp out child sex abuse as the Senate prepares to pass a bill to jail paedophiles for life.
A bill enabling paedophiles to be jailed for life is set to pass federal parliament.
Attorney-General Christian Porter says paedophiles were too often given short sentences and released into the community without supervision.
"Sexual crimes against children destroy lives," he said on Thursday.
While Labor has concerns about mandatory minimum sentencing, senators won't oppose the bill on Thursday if its amendments don't get supported.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese told parliament on Wednesday his party would assist the government in "any way possible" to stamp out child abuse.
The comments followed Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton detailing a recent police operation which had saved 14 children subject to abuse, with a number of arrests made.
"The Australian Federal Police working with AUSTRAC and others is detecting more and more people who are depraved, who are online and who deserve to be caught and will be punished," Mr Dutton told parliament.
Paedophiles would face mandatory minimum sentences under the bill which would also limit bail for repeat offenders. The majority of child sex offences are the responsibilities of the states, with the proposed laws aimed at targeting online or overseas predators.
Several new offences would also be created, targeting those who administer websites that distribute child sex abuse material. It would also create offences for when someone subjects a child to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, or which causes a child to die.
The proposal will not apply to people under 18.
Mr Porter said nearly 40 per cent of federally-convicted child sex offenders spent no time behind bars in 2019.
Tasmania reforms child abuse claims and obligations
Barry.Nilsson. LawyersThe recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has empowered the Tasmanian Government to revolutionise the law in Tasmania in regards to child abuse claims with the enactment of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Organisational Liability for Child Abuse) Act 2019 (the Act).
The Act came into force on 1 May 2020. Prior to 1 May 2020, the Civil Liability Act 2002 (CLA) excluded intentional acts that were sexual assaults or other sexual misconduct. Now, the CLA provides a definition of child sexual abuse, expands the scope of liability of organisations and individuals within organisations for child abuse and provides a presumption that organisations are liable unless it can be proven they have taken reasonable precautions to prevent child abuse being committed (s 49H(3) CLA).
Amendments to the Civil Liability Act 2002 (Tas) may be found at Barry Nilsson
Implications for you
The amendments now impose on organisations an active duty to take measures and precautions to ensure that both their employees and individuals associated with their organisation are not perpetrating child sexual abuse. It is important that organisations review these measures and precautions regularly to ensure they remain relevant and purposeful. Further, organisations should review their legal relationships with persons ‘akin to employees’. It goes without saying that any measures taken ought to be recorded carefully together with their implementation and monitored.
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