Petition to shut down Pornhub claims adult website is a 'hotbed' of child exploitation and sex trafficking
Rose Kalemba, a 14-year-old from Ohio, was on a walk one night when she was kidnapped at knifepoint, sexually assaulted and beaten by two men for 12 hours. She was then dumped on a road about 30 minutes from her home. Bleeding and traumatized, she managed to walk home and get help.
Days later, videos of her being sexually assaulted ended up on Pornhub. "Teen crying and getting slapped around", "Teen getting destroyed," "Passed out teen" the videos said, and one of them had racked up enough views to call it viral. Pornhub allegedly ignored her pleading emails as a minor to take it down.
The terrifying part is, there are hundreds of videos on Pornhub that say almost the same things and all it takes is a google search to find it.
All it takes to upload a video, any kind of video, on the website is 10 minutes and an email address says Laila Mickelwait from Exodus Cry. For this reason the international non-profit, which is committed to abolishing sex trafficking, wants Pornhub banned for good.
"Pornhub is a hotbed for sex trafficking and exploitation because the company has taken no serious measures to verify the age or consent of those who upload sex acts to their website," Mickelwait told MEA World Wide (MEAWW) in an exclusive statement.
All you need to upload pornography of any kind on the site is an email address, a photo and a username and it declares you "verified" she explains. No actual name, no government-issued ID and no consent form are required, making it a "free for all" for "pimps and traffickers to be able to cash in on the violent exploitation of women and children on the site".
Pornhub, meanwhile, has refuted Mickelwait's claims. Verified users are confirmed human uploaders, and content that violates the website's terms of service is removed as soon as we are made aware of it, Blake White, VP of Pornhub, told MEAWW.
However, White has no information on how Rose Kalemba's video ended up on the website and how it was handled because the case dates back to 2009, several years prior to Pornhub being acquired by its current owners.
"Since these horrific allegations in 2009, Pornhub has changed ownership and put in place the industry's most stringent safeguards and policies when it comes to combating unauthorized and illegal content using both human moderation and state of the art technology. Pornhub is committed to continually improving its moderation systems and working with the wider tech community to eradicate illegal content from the internet," White said.
But sadly, Kalemba's story is not the only one.
A 15-year-old girl went missing in Florida only to be found after 58 videos of her being sexually assaulted were posted on Periscope, Modelhub, Snapchat and other websites months after she went missing. Mickelwait's Change.Org petition also states that the official Twitter account for Pornhub initially said that the 15-year-old girl had been a verified member and then went on to delete the tweet.
Pornhub said the twitter post was removed as it was related to an ongoing police investigation. "We cooperated fully with the authorities," White said.
However, Mickelwait says that she's not talking about "banning porn."
"I am talking about shutting a multi-million dollar company down who is profiting off of the rape, sex trafficking and assault of women and children. It is not an extreme point of view to think that the largest and most popular porn website in the world should not be allowed to cash in on the trauma, exploitation, and rape of women and children. And that is what is happening right now, and it is not ok," she said.
It's also about accountability, she says. "Every sex act on Pornhub is commercial because the site exists to make money. Pornhub is not a non-profit. This is an extremely lucrative business for this company and every minor on that site is a sex trafficking victim. That is important for everyone to understand," she said.