Pornhub Parent MindGeek Sued by 40 ‘Girls Do Porn’ Victims for $40M

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“You can hear the woman yelling to stop because it hurts,” she said recently of the video, which includes a tag showing it’s been on the site five years. “She’s angrily telling the man to shut the camera off and stop filming.” In August 2023, as part of the Pornhub network, Aylo launched UViU, a platform for creators to sell content directly to fans.[91] Designed with creator input, UViU helps diversify income and increase earnings. It offers tools for video sales, paid subscriptions, tips, and direct messages. Fans can discover and browse creators’ content, while creators can manage their Pornhub and UViU accounts from one dashboard.

After stint on FBI’s Most Wanted List, GirlsDoPorn founder arrives in San Diego court

The women were awarded nearly $13 million by a San Diego Superior Court judge. Late last year, prior to Enright’s ruling in the civil suit, federal prosecutors filed sex trafficking charges against the site’s owners and operators, alleging many of the same claims presented in the civil case. Six defendants are currently charged, including GirlsDoPorn owner Michael James Pratt, who remains at large. The complaint against Mindgeek details the extended abuse, harassment, and sexual violence that many women who were coerced into appearing in these videos endured. In December, 40 women filed a lawsuit against Mindgeek, demanding more than $40 million in damages, plus any money Mindgeek earned from their videos, and legal fees. The amended complaint was filed on Thursday in San Diego federal court, according to local news outlet Fox 5 San Diego.

• The 40 women – of all whom are referred to by the pseudonym Jane Doe and a number – are demanding a jury trial and seeking more than $1m (£739,000) each.
• As she tweeted piece after piece of evidence proving Pornhub’s complicity in crimes posted on their site people saw and responded.
• According to The Mercury News based out of California, Garcia, 31, was sentenced for conspiracy and sex trafficking involving San Diego-based website GirlsDoPorn.
• Last week, the platform released its first-ever transparency report for 2020, as part of its updated trust and safety policies.

62 women sue PornHub in latest San Diego case involving GirlsDoPorn videos

Findlater, from the Stop It Now helpline, says he hopes other companies, such as social media websites and file-hosting platforms, can look at the results of the trial and introduce similar nudges where people are seeking CSAM. “The more places you can put it, the greater chance you’re going to catch those people that might be at a stage where they can still be helped, or those people that are looking for help but don’t know about it,” Sexton says. Mickelwait chronicles the investigations conducted by herself and colleagues, who have spoken with rape survivors, moderators and former employees of MindGeek — which owned Pornhub until June last year. When she describes chasing criminals in an attempt to hold them to account in US courts the style is hyperbolic — but, then, there is much that is dramatic about the online porn industry. I felt like I never got used to hearing, and every situation was unique as well. But just to hear the way that these victims had the worst moments of their lives filmed.

The operators told them that the videos would never appear online, so that their home communities wouldn’t find out, but they uploaded the footage to sites like Pornhub, where the videos went viral—and in many instances, destroyed their lives. Girls Do Porn was an official Pornhub content partner, with its videos frequently appearing on the front page, where they gathered millions of views. The lawsuit alleges Aylo continued to do business with GirlsDoPorn amid another lawsuit filed in San Diego by 22 women, who alleged they were coerced to film pornographic videos or led to believe their videos would only be distributed on DVDs to private owners, rather than proliferated online. A judge awarded the women nearly $13 million at the conclusion of a trial. The book relates how, through investigative journalism, Mickelwait discovered that one of the world’s biggest websites was knowingly profiting from sex trafficking, and reveals her subsequent fight to hold Pornhub accountable for its distribution and monetization of child sexual abuse and rape.

The new lawsuit alleges the company’s business partnership with GirlsDoPorn only ended because GirlsDoPorn ceased to exist amid a Department of Justice sex trafficking investigation. The charges are separate from an ongoing trial in San Diego Superior Court, in which 22 women are accusing the company of recruiting them to shoot porn under false pretenses. In their suit, the women claim that they were told that they were being hired for modeling jobs, for which they would be paid $5,000, and were not informed that they would be making pornographic content until they arrived on set. During testimony earlier this week, Moser, who spoke on behalf of the plaintiffs, said that Pratt instructed her not to tell recruits the name of the company, telling her to call it “Plus One Media” instead. The owner and three employees of Girls Do Porn, the porn company accused of lying to and coercing women into shooting content for them, were arrested and charged with sex trafficking on Thursday. The site allows users to upload their own content, and therein lies the HUGE, maybe criminal problem.

Weeks after they returned home, the videos were released in full on Pratt’s subscription site, and as clips on PornHub and other popular free porn platforms. “Garcia and Pratt bought me a birthday cake to include in the filming process so he could let everyone know that I had just turned 18,” she said. Dozens of victims had gathered at San Diego’s James M. Carter and Judith N. Keep Courthouse to speak at the sentencing hearing when they were told that Pratt was in federal custody. Their challenge to Texas’s age-verification law is set to be heard by the US Supreme Court during its fall term. It’s a case that would decide the legality of these laws coast to coast. The mother of two began her fight against the online porn empire in early 2020, as horror stories began to mount.