Ben Sasse Demands Probe of Porn Website 'Infested with Rape Videos' Following Sickening Report
Pornhub is “infested with rape videos” and profits from exploitative content, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist wrote in a Friday New York Times Op-Ed.
The pornography website has been listed as one of the most popular sites in the world, with 3.5 billion visits every month, Nicholas Kristof wrote.
“It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags,” Kristof wrote.
“A search for ‘girls under18′ (no space) or ’14yo’ leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren’t of children being assaulted, but too many are.”
Kristof’s Op-Ed echoes the accusations of many anti-pornography activists: Pornhub profits from exploitative material and does little to remove videos of violent sexual crimes, sometimes against minors, from its website.
“Because it’s impossible to be sure whether a youth in a video is 14 or 18, neither Pornhub nor anyone else has a clear idea of how much content is illegal,” Kristof wrote.
“It is completely unacceptable that Pornhub and its parent company [MindGeek] make money from rape, sexual abuse, and the exploitation of minors,” Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday.
“The Department of Justice needs to open an investigation into the scumbags who run [MindGeek],” Sasse, who also called on the Justice Department to investigate Pornhub in March, added.
“Sexual exploitation and human trafficking are abhorrent, period. A decent society should be working to end this.”
Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley also called for a government crackdown on Pornhub in a Friday morning tweet, calling Kristof’s story “tremendous reporting” on “the exploitation that occurs on sites like Pornhub.”
“It’s time for it to end,” Hawley tweeted. “I will introduce legislation to create a federal right to sue for every person coerced or trafficked or exploited by sites like Pornhub.”
Tremendous reporting by @NickKristof on the exploitation that occurs on sites like Pornhub. It’s time for it to end. I will introduce legislation to create a federal right to sue for every person coerced or trafficked or exploited by sites like Pornhub https://t.co/tOynnIILOx
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) December 4, 2020
Kristof’s Op-Ed lists a number of incidents in which young girls were allegedly exploited by Pornhub.
In one example, a mother found her missing 15-year-old daughter in 58 videos on Pornhub.
In another, videos of sexual assaults on a 14-year-old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were not removed by the website until a classmate reported them to authorities.
Pornhub “escaped responsibility for sharing the videos and profiting from them” in both these cases, though the offenders were arrested for the assaults, according to Kristof.
The columnist also shared a story about a young woman named Cali who was reportedly adopted from China and trafficked by her adopted family.
From the age of 9, Kristof wrote, Cali’s family forced her to appear in pornographic videos, some of which ended up on Pornhub.
“Pornhub became my trafficker,” 23-year-old Cali said. “I’m still getting sold, even though I’m five years out of that life.”
Activist Laila Mickelwait has accused Pornhub of failing to verify the age and consent of those who appear in videos.
Her Change.org petition, which calls for the government to “shut down Pornhub and hold its executives accountable for aiding trafficking,” has garnered over 1.2 million signatures since it was published in February.
“My research took me to discover what anybody could discover if they go on Pornhub,” Mickelwait told the DCNF in March.
“And that is the fact that Pornub does not require verification of the age or consent of millions of people who are uploading hardcore pornographic content to their website.”
Pornhub has repeatedly denied these accusations and said it is committed to combating child sexual abuse.
In a statement to Kristof, the pornography website said it “has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community” and emphasized that any suggestion that Pornhub allows illegal videos on its website is “irresponsible and flagrantly untrue.”
Pornhub gave a similar statement to the DCNF in March on its “state-of-the-art, comprehensive safeguards” that “combat and remove all unauthorized content that breaches the platform’s policies.”
Neither Pornhub nor MindGeek responded to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF.
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A version of this article appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation website.
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