Pornhub to face trial over allegations it profited off videos, images of teen's abuse
Editor's note: Warning, this article contains descriptions of sexually exploitative content that some readers might find disturbing.
Pornhub made no attempt to verify the identity of a 16-year-old girl whose abuser uploaded videos showing her rape and sexual exploitation, according to a lawsuit alleging that the company knowingly profited from child sex trafficking.
In a decision last Thursday, Federal Judge L. Scott Coogler of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama denied Pornhub’s motion for summary judgment in response to the teen's lawsuit. The plaintiff is referred to as “Jane Doe” in the legal document, with Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek, which changed its name to Aylo last year, serving as the defendants.
The court denied the pornography giant’s assertion that it’s immune from liability due to Section 230, which generally protects online platforms from lawsuits based on user-generated content. As a result, the teen's lawsuit will go to trial.
Laila Mickelwait, CEO of the Justice Defense Fund and author of Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape and Sex Trafficking, applauded the decision. The advocate has dedicated years of her life to holding Pornhub and its parent company accountable for distributing videos depicting sexual abuse.
“This decision is a powerful step forward for justice,” Mickelwait declared in a statement provided to The Christian Post. “The evidence of criminal complicity by Pornhub’s executives is overwhelming. In addition to restitution for all victims, full criminal prosecution of the company and its executives is essential to ensure justice for survivors and to deter future abusers.”
Pornhub and its parent company Aylo did not respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
Jane Doe was 16 in early 2018 when her abuser filmed her engaging in a sexual act in his car, according to the document. The girl’s face was visible in the video that the man uploaded to his Pornhub account in February 2018.
The abuser participated in a program on Pornhub that enabled him to make money by uploading videos to the site. The pornography giant also profited off the revenue generated from views and downloads of the video depicting Jane Doe’s abuse.
The man is also accused of drugging Jane Doe and filming himself raping her in a hotel room, which he later uploaded to Pornhub in May 2020. The content uploaded online depicting Jane Doe’s abuse included 34 videos and six photo albums.
The perpetrator later pled guilty in April 2022 to "dissemination/display of obscene matter" involving someone younger than 17, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Jane Doe filed a class action lawsuit against the defendants in February 2021.
Another issue the judge highlighted in his ruling concerned the algorithm defendants created for their sites. Coogler noted that the defendants utilize tags and keyword titles that help uploaders advertise and locate child sex abuse material.
“Indeed, Defendants tracked how much traffic and profit each category and tag earned them — down to the dollar amount per month and per day for the most popular tags,” he wrote. “For example, in October 2019, the category ‘teen’ was the 6th most popular category, earning over $150,000 that month, amounting to just over 30% of total revenue that month.”
“The tag ‘young’ ranked number 2, ‘teenager’ ranked number 3, and ‘teen’ ranked 13 that same month, with each earning over $132,000, $117,000, and $54,000, respectively,” the federal judge continued.
Executives at the porn site also resisted efforts to remove certain search terms, such as “young girl,” citing an email in which one of the defendants’ colleagues objected to adding the term to a “banned word” list. The executive claimed that he didn’t think “young girl” implied underage in the same way as “young boy.”
Anti-sexual exploitation advocates are expressing gratitude toward the federal judge’s ruling for exposing how Pornhub profits from sexual exploitation and sex trafficking.
“This significant ruling is a victory for the brave Survivor-Plaintiff as it ensures Pornhub cannot use Section 230 as a legal shield and must face accountability for profiting from her child sexual abuse,” Dani Pinter, senior vice president and director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center, said in a statement shared with CP.
The NCOSE Law Center is one of several firms representing Jane Doe.
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Child beauty pageants ‘a pedophile’s holiday’
– senior priest
An archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church has criticized parents who enter their kids in child beauty pageants, describing such events as a “pedophile’s holiday.”
In a video published on social media on Sunday, Andrey Tkachev compared competitions in which small girls are evaluated on their physical appearance to Sodom and Gomorrah, the biblical cities that were destroyed by God for their wickedness.
"To be frank, child beauty pageants are a pedophile’s holiday. A five-year-old… wiggles like a grown woman, and the jury consisting of 60-year-old fat mugs drool on her,” he said.
The cleric recalled that he had seen girls participating in such an event when he visited a television studio to take part in a different program. “They were all dressed like ballerinas and had makeup like grown-up women, with bright lips,” he said.
"Little girls are being dressed like prostitutes… It is their own mothers who dressed them like little prostitutes. They put makeup on them. They made them learn stupid poems and songs. Now, they will compete on stage, with old men looking at them. And the mothers will sit in the audience and applaud their daughters,” the archpriest added.
These parents have “completely backward thinking, they are total idiots, they do not understand anything,” he claimed.
Despite concerns over their psychological and emotional effect on kids, child beauty pageants continue to be organized in Russia, with events like Mini Miss and Mister Russia attracting hundreds of participants from across the country. Some contests have also been held in an online format in recent years, making them even more accessible.
In 2014, a draft law banning child beauty pageants was introduced in the Russian parliament, but did not pass. Back then, controversial MP Vitaly Milonov said such competitions “crush a child’s psyche,” arguing that children should not be compared by their appearance “like dogs.”
Local authorities in several Russian regions, including the Republic of Tatarstan and Krasnodar Region, have banned beauty pageants for kids from being held on their territory.
I, for one, am hard-pressed to disagree with him. Do you?
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Alleged Russian ‘gay tour’ organizer
found dead in prison cell
The owner of a Russian travel agency who was accused of arranging ‘gay tours’ domestically and abroad has been found dead in his cell in Moscow, while awaiting trial on extremism charges.
Andrey Kotov’s body was discovered reportedly showing signs of suicide in the Vodnik pre-trial detention center on Sunday, according to TASS, citing police sources. His death was confirmed by his lawyer Leysan Mannapova, as well as Eva Merkachyova, a member of the presidential Human Rights Council.
The owner of ‘Man Travel’ was arrested in late November. According to the Moscow court system, police believed Kotov was organizing tours that involved “propaganda of the ideology of the LGBT movement.” TASS cited a police official as claiming that Kotov was planning such a trip to Egypt during the New Year holiday season.
Russia outlawed “LGBT propaganda” in 2022, after which “international LGBT movement” was designated as an extremist group.
Kotov denied any wrongdoing and accused police of torture. “My phones have photos and videos of participants going to museums, sailing on a motorboat and sunbathing. It is perfectly clear that these were ordinary tours. There was no propaganda of any kind, let alone extremism,” Kotov said shortly after his arrest.
Throughout 2024, Russian police have raided multiple gay bars and clubs and busted “LGBT gatherings” in major cities. In March, a court in Orenburg, a city near the border with Kazakhstan, ordered the arrest of a manager and an art director of a local gay nightclub named ‘Pose’.
Although homosexuality itself is not banned in Russia, courts and law enforcement have broad discretion in defining what constitutes“propaganda” of same-sex relations.
“Homosexual relationships and propagandizing those relationships are different things,” Human Rights Council chief Valery Fadeev told news agency RBC earlier this month.
“A homosexual relationship, that’s private life. And no one interferes with that. Gays have always been around, in all times, more or less,” Fadeev said.
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