Several Republican members of Congress are calling for Pornhub to be investigated after The New York Times published an article from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist claiming the pornography website is “infested with rape videos.”
In a piece titled “The Children of Pornhub,” opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof examined the toll that Pornhub is taking on young girls especially. “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 went on to recount the stories of individual girls whose lives had been wrecked after salacious footage of them was uploaded to Pornhub, which is the 10th-most-visited website in the world. The porn behemoth, which is owned by private porn conglomerate Mindgeek, boasts 3.5 billion visits per month and rakes in profits from almost 3 billion ad impressions daily.
“The Department of Justice needs to open an investigation into the scumbags who run Mindgeek,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday. “Sexual exploitation and human trafficking are abhorrent, period. A decent society should be working to end this.”
“It is completely unacceptable that Pornhub and its parent company Mindgeek make money from rape, sexual abuse, and the exploitation of minors,” Sasse added. “They need to be investigated, and the DOJ needs more urgency about building cases against creeps.”
Sasse asked Attorney General William Barr to open a federal investigation into Pornhub back in March. In his letter to Barr, Sasse wrote in part:
In several notable incidents over the past year, Pornhub made content available worldwide showing women and girls that were victims of trafficking being raped and exploited. Indeed, the problem of Pornhub streaming content featuring women and children victims of sex trafficking reached the point in November that Paypal cut off services for Pornhub, refusing to facilitate this abuse any longer… Pornhub must not escape scrutiny. I therefore request that the Department open an investigation into Pornhub and its parent entity MindGeek Holding SARL for their involvement in this disturbing pipeline of exploiting children and other victims and survivors of sex trafficking.
Praising Kristof’s reporting as “tremendous,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) echoed Sasse’s sentiments, tweeting, “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.”
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
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who was one of four lawmakers to urge Barr to seek increased action against “obscene pornography” in 2019, told The Daily Wire: “Last year, I called on the attorney general to prosecute distributors of this kind of hardcore pornography, which should be illegal under existing obscenity law. It’s disgusting, it’s harmful, and it’s the last thing we [should] look the other way about.”
Pornhub has repeatedly denied culpability in underage sex abuse. In a statement to Kristof, Pornhub said it “has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community” and maintained that any claim otherwise is “irresponsible and flagrantly untrue.”
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