A federal class action lawsuit has been filed against PornHub and its parent company MindGeek accusing the adult website of hosting several rape videos of sex-trafficking victims and making profits from them. It further alleges that MindGeek didn't take any step to verify the ages and consent of those in the videos, according to court records filed on Friday.
The lawsuit has been filed by a 16-year-old Alabama girl, who has alleged that the adult website uploaded a video of her sexual abuse along with another girl, who resides in California. PornHub lately ran into controversy following allegations that it has time and again uploaded videos of sex-trafficking victims, without verifying their age and failed to take steps to stop uploading unlawful content. This saw many companies like Visa and Mastercard cutting of ties with the adult website in recent times.
Shocking Allegations
The Alabama girl, who claims to have filed the federal class action lawsuit against Pornhub and MindGeek, said that she was drugged and raped along with another girl. The sexual abuse was filmed and then uploaded to Modelhub, a subsidiary of MindGeek for "amateur" pornographers, the suit alleges.
Named as Jane Doe 1 in the lawsuit, the victim claims that she was 16 years old when she was raped by a Tuscaloosa man. The alleged rapist is also not named in the suit. The lawsuit alleges that the site violated a number of laws, including the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, under which victims can sue entities in civil court for benefiting from "a venture that it should have known was engaged in a violation, including that an act involving a child 18 years of age or under constitutes a violation," according to the complaint.
Morally Irresponsible
The complaint mentions that MindGeek "reviewed, categorized, tagged, and disseminated the images and videos" but didn't take necessary steps to stop the exploitation of the victim. One of the videos of Jane Doe 1 had been viewed more than 2,400 times since MindGeek added it to its websites in early 2018, the complaint states.
The other victim, Jane Doe 2 was 14 years old when she was trafficked and compelled to appear in videos wherein adults would repeatedly rape her. These videos were then uploaded to MindGeek's websites, including Pornhub and Redtube, the suit states.
Much like Jane Doe 1, the company never took the initiative to verify the age and consent of Jane Doe 2. There are at least four videos of the two victims that were uploaded on the porn website from which it still continues to make profits, while the victims remain traumatized years after the incidents.
The suit, filed by over a dozen attorneys, alleges that MindGeek is completely ill-equipped to monitor the millions of videos that are uploaded to the company's many porn sites each year, while it continues to make profits. The lawsuit mentions that MindGeek has an "offshore 'moderation team'" comprising 10 individuals who are responsible for removing videos depicting child porn and other "inappropriate" content but with the sheer volume of content, it's impossible to view all of them adequately.
PornHub and MindGeek haven't yet commented on the recent allegations.
