Petition Attacks Pornhub

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DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - More than a million people are attempting to shut down the world's largest porn site, which is accused of exploiting underage females.

Pornhub, reportedly involved in sex trafficking and hosting child-rape videos, is now facing a petition that bears more than one million signatures. The "Traffickinghub" petition was launched by Laila Mickelwait, founder of the anti-trafficking organization, Exodus Cry.

Mickelwait posted a video on June 10 to mark the milestone and explain the goals of the petition.

"We just reached one million signatures on the petition to shut down Pornhub and to hold its executives accountable for enabling and profiting in the rape and the trafficking of women and children," remarked Mickelwait.

In the last few months there have been several shocking cases of sex-trafficking and child-rape films hosted by Pornhub. Mickelwait is seeking to end this evil enterprise and hold those behind it accountable.

One recent example Mickewait cites is of a 15-year-old girl from south Florida, who's been missing for a year. The girl was finally located after her mother was tipped off that her daughter was featured in videos on the website.

Nearly 60 such videos of her rape and sexual abuse were discovered on Pornhub. This led to the arrest of a 30-year-old man from Fort Lauderdale, who was charged with sex trafficking.

Michael Pratt, owner of a pornography website from which Pornhub uploads videos, was sued by 22 women who claimed they were deceived and coerced into performing sex acts on film. These videos were subsequently found on Pornhub.

The women won a $12.7 million lawsuit against Pratt's porn company. According to a federal indictment, Pratt and his co-conspirators trafficked a minor while filming and producing a video of the girl being raped. Pratt, who reportedly fled the United States for New Zealand, is currently wanted on a federal warrant.

Mickelwait believes there are others who should also be wanted by law enforcement, like CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo of Mindgeek, the company that owns Pornhub. She alleges that Pornhub is complicit in the sex-trafficking of minors by allowing its site to upload illegal material without any mechanism in place for stopping it.

"Pornhub is perhaps the largest collection of sexual violence evidence in existence, and that is what's keeping me up at night," Mickelwait asserts. "It's normalized in mainstream culture and if you peel a few layers you can see there is this huge dark underbelly to the company."

She added,

When people realize that and start connecting the dots, they are shocked and horrified. I have gotten quite a number of messages from men saying, "I've wanted to quit for one reason or another, and sometimes I've gone back, but knowing there is (sic) exploited children and women behind the camera has given me the motivation to really quit."

Pornhub uploads six million videos per year and gets some 42 billion visits. There is no system in place, however, to reliably verify the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic content it hosts and from which it profits. By playing on the weakness of human nature and the addictive power of pornography, the website generates millions of dollars in advertising and membership revenue annually.

All that is needed to upload pornography onto Pornhub is an e-mail address. "Pornhub will allow anyone to upload with just an email address and will 'verify' anyone with a photo & piece of paper w/ a username written on it," Mickelwait wrote on social media. "No Gov issued ID required. This means the company is intentionally aiding trafficking of children and trafficking of adults."

One of the most-searched terms on Pornhub is "teen," she notes. The word has been a top-ten search on the site for six consecutive years. Some of those featured in videos look no older than 13, according to Mickelwait. "Today I spoke with the Internet Watch Foundation that investigated and confirmed over 100 cases of children being sexually abused on Pornhub," she wrote on social media. While posting (on her Twitter page) photographs from a Pornhub search of what look like underage girls, Mickelwait commented, "In under 10 minutes on Pornhub starting with 'most viewed' videos, I saw these faces and titles. Are they children being raped on camera? One thing you can be sure of, Pornhub has no proof that they aren't — and they make it a policy not to find out."

Mickelwait notes the million-plus signatures have come from people in more than 192 countries.

"This has truly become a global grassroots movement of accountability against a mega-corporation and the mega-pimps and trackers (sic) behind it, to hold [them] accountable for complicity in these horrific crimes of abuse against some of the most vulnerable in our society," affirms Mickelwait.

The petition remains online for anyone of good will to sign.

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