Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska says the U.S. Department of Justice must investigate Pornhub over allegedly streaming videos that include child pornography and violent rape.
“This is pretty obvious: any company that profits from rape, trafficking, and exploitation must be held accountable,” Sasse says in a statement to Faithwire. “The reporting on Pornhub has been gut-wrenching. Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek must not escape scrutiny. The Department of Justice needs to take the first step of opening an investigation.”
Pornhub streams and shares pornography on its website, which is owned by Canada-based MindGeek. The pornographic website is the 35th most-visited site in the U.S., according to Amazon’s Alexa.
“Pornhub made content available worldwide showing women and girls that were victims of trafficking being raped and exploited,” Sasse says in his letter to the DOJ.
Sasse references Tonya Alanez of the Sun-Sentinel, who reports that in October, Florida police arrested a man for trafficking a 15-year-old girl. The girl was allegedly abused, repeatedly raped and forced to have an abortion. Fifty-eight videos of this abuse were reportedly uploaded to Pornhub.
PayPal cut off their services for Pornhub because of repeated instances of people uploading videos of abuse and exploitation. Reuters reports that the payment company conducted a review of Pornhub and found that the website made payments without PayPal’s permission.
Pornhub has faced increasing scrutiny recently because of videos found on their site. An online petition to shut down Pornhub alleges that videos from several sex trafficking cases have been found on the pornographic site. So far, the petition has over 425,000 signatures.
“Pornhub is complicit in the trafficking of these women and minors and probably thousands more like them,” the petition says. “Pornhub is generating millions in advertising and membership revenue with 42 billion visits and 6 million videos uploaded per year. Yet it has no system in place to verify reliably the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic content it hosts and profits from.”
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