Pornhubs parent company settles criminal probe in case linked to San Diego-based GirlsDoPorn

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The company also suspended user-uploaded content in December 2020 following a separate set of allegations involving child abuse and rape-related videos. In the complaint about damages against Mindgeek, it was alleged that victims had sent the company “complaints detailing the fraud and coercion they were subject to by Girls Do Porn” but the company had not ended the partnership. Once the women discovered their videos were posted online, the website owners ignored requests to take the videos down and cut contact with the women altogether, Enright ruled.

Porn Victims Hit Pornhub With Massive Lawsuit: ‘I’m Going To Kill Myself If This Stays Up’

The plaintiffs allege MindGeek owns and operates a multitude of pornographic sites that have hosted videos featuring the women, and that it maintained its business relationship with GirlsDoPorn even as the site came under scrutiny for allegations of videos made through coercion and fraud. In total, the lawsuit is demanding more than $40 million in damages—at least $1 million per plaintiff—as well as the money MindGeek earned from hosting and promoting their videos and legal fees, Vice reports. The survivors claim that Montreal-based MindGeek—the company that owns and operates over 60 porn sites, much of what people generally understand to be the mainstream porn industry—failed to moderate and remove videos from its sites featuring the women being sex trafficked. “This defendant lured one victim after another with fake modeling ads, false promises and deceptive front companies, ultimately devolving to threats to coerce these women into making sex videos,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman. “Even when victims told Garcia how the scheme had devastated their lives, he showed no regard for their well-being. The crime was utterly callous in nature and there is no excuse or justification for his conduct, which was driven purely by greed.

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Pornhub’s parent company has agreed to pay more than $1.8 million to resolve a criminal probe alleging it profited from sex trafficking through its hosting of videos produced by San Diego-based GirlsDoPorn.com. The women alleged they were coerced to film pornographic videos or led to believe their videos would only be distributed to private owners, rather than proliferated online on GirlsDoPorn’s subscription website, as well as numerous free sites, many of which are owned by MindGeek. Michael James Pratt disappeared in the summer of 2019, just before he was indicted on federal conspiracy and sex trafficking charges stemming from what prosecutors said was a decade-long scheme to con hundreds of teens and young women into appearing in adult videos for the website he owned.

• Garcia admitted that he and co-defendant Michael Pratt were the lead recruiters for GDP and GDT.
• Like all dealers of addictive and abusive substances, they want to hook their users in while young and impressionable.
• They are literally profiting off both criminal behavior and people’s pain.
• Exodus Cry is committed to abolishing sex trafficking and breaking the cycle of commercial sexual exploitation while assisting and empowering its victims.

And when the victim finally agreed, they were told that the videos would not end up online without their permission, which turned out not to be true. Over 100 victims have been identified in this case, and it doesn’t stop at studios. Another case involved a 15-year-old girl who was kidnapped forced to be in a video. Authorities found a receipt for an abortion in the traffickers apartment. Because of these events, Pornhub deleted 75 percent of its videos online that weren’t verified by them, since the company was summoned to court and have said they took measures to ensure videos like these don’t end up on their website. If the company really cared about stopping trafficking, then why were they aware of this for years?

• Its free content — which makes up the vast majority of the videos available — is a smokescreen for its pay-to-download content.
• MindGeek is framing the scrutiny as anti-porn and anti-sex work, stating that there is inherent hypocrisy of targeting Pornhub and not other hosts of child pornography and other non-consensual videos.
• In 2020, 40 women — victims of the “Girls Do Porn” sex-trafficking operation — sued Pornhub in federal court in California, alleging the company knowingly profited from illegal videos of their abuse.
• It’s alleged that all 40 victims named in the suit became suicidal over the harassment they received from their videos being spread online without their consent.

If MindGeek did not know GirlsDoPorn was a sex trafficking venture before October 2019, it should have known for a great number of reasons, the most notable of which is that GirlsDoPorn’s victims sent MindGeek complaints detailing the fraud and coercion they were subjected to by GirlsDoPorn. Because of this knowledge, MindGeek is, at minimum, civilly liable to Plaintiffs under Section 1595 for damages and attorney fees. GirlsDoPorn was using fraud, intimidation, and coercion are part of its regular business practices until the criminal charges were filed in October 2019, MindGeek’s ignorance of the sex trafficking is a direct result of its own negligence, which still triggers Section 1595 liability. Pornhub has faced increasing problems amid allegations that it hosted content featuring child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual violence, rape, and other illegal material.

The two sides settled the suit about a year later on terms that both sides agreed not to disclose. The new lawsuit was filed by 62 new women represented by the same attorneys. The site allows users to upload their own content, and therein lies the HUGE, maybe criminal problem… MindGeek doesn’t regulate the types of videos being uploaded and often allows content that is illegal or stolen. We’re still waiting for criminal prosecution, not only for the company, but for its individual owners.

There’s 26 lawsuits currently, on behalf of victims across the U.S., Canada and the U.K., multiple class-action lawsuits on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims, and so we’re in this process of trying to fight for justice and accountability. In the article, Kristoff notes child pornography and nonconsensual porn videos aren’t unique to Pornhub, or even porn sites. But the direct links between Pornhub and the way the company profits off these videos — and, as Kristoff argues, attracts pedophiles as customers — is worrying.

Most of the hyperlink advertisements on these victim’s videos redirect the visitor to MindGeek’s paysite, Others redirect the visitor to third-party paysites, such as JerkMate.com. The FBI is still searching for GirlsDoPorn creator Michael Pratt, who faces criminal sex-trafficking and child-porn charges. Charges were also filed against other GirlsDoPorn principals including Ruben Andre Garcia and Matthew Wolfe. PornHub and the other Aylo sites finally removed the videos in 2019 after the FBI raided GirlsDoPorn and Pratt and his co-defendants were charged criminally, according to the lawsuit. In response to the initial complaint against the company, Pratt denied the charges, saying through his attorney that the plaintiffs had “failed to exercise ordinary and reasonable care on their own behalf,” and thus had no right to claim damages. He also attempted to stall the trial by declaring bankruptcy in January, writing in a text message that “as soon as i bankrupt the business they [the plaintiffs] are fucked.” Last month, he fled the country and is officially considered a “fugitive” by the FBI.

However, many sex workers also support an overhaul of Pornhub to prevent the proliferation of sex-trafficking and nonconsensual videos. Motherboard has an overview of the various campaigns, and tensions within them. Pornhub has made terms such as “underage” or “rape” un-searchable on its site, but Kristoff notes that doesn’t make it particularly hard to find that content. Other search terms will pop up rape or ‘underage’ videos, and while role-playing makes it hard to discern what is real, Kristoff says Pornhub is ‘promoting’ videos with language to attract pedophiles. Copyright in a settlement agreement is “standard practice” for attorneys representing victims of nonconsensual pornography, Erica Johnstone, co-founder of the nonprofit legal privacy advocacy group Without My Consent, told Gizmodo.