The parent company of Pornhub is being sued by a minor child’s mother for the X-rated adult website allegedly allowing the dissemination of videos and images of her son being molested by an Alabama man despite authorities’ warning.
Plaintiff CV1 Mother, an anonymous name used due to the sensitive and private nature of the allegations, filed a lawsuit last month against Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek, other foreign entities, and Rocky Shay Frankin, a resident of Greenville, Alabama, who has been accused of entering into a contractual relationship with the pornography website’s operator in a U.S. District Court of Alabama.
“This lawsuit concerns perhaps one of the most disturbing courses of conduct imaginable: the exploitation of child molestation for profit,” the lawsuit reads. “The MindGeek Defendants are those entities who utilized their platform(s) in collaboration with Defendant Franklin to disseminate obvious images and videos of child molestation, thereby profiting from their dissemination.”
Franklin allegedly uploaded at least 23 videos molesting the child offered for at least $15, which prosecutors said represents “substantial financial benefit to the MindGeek Defendants in multiple ways.”
Franklin was arrested in May 2020 for sexually exploiting a child, advertising child pornography, and distributing child pornography. Following his arrest, he pled guilty and is currently serving 40 years in prison.
Before his sentencing, the lawsuit claims Franklin lived with plaintiff CV1’s Mother and her children between July and October 2018, during which he assaulted the 12-year-old and another minor.
“Franklin overpowered them and, in some cases, drugged them for the purpose of preying on them [while] recording his acts of sexual violence,” the court document describes.
According to the lawsuit, Franklin entered a contractual relationship with MindGeek, where the footage of the molestation generated an “astonishing” 188,000 video views with more than 1,100 subscribers on Pornhub.
MindGeek officials were asked by authorities to remove the content of the 12-year-old victim’s assault.
MindGeek allegedly removed the content in December 2019 following three separate requests from authorities.
MindGeek told The Journal of Montreal that company officials were aware of the lawsuit, saying the Pornhub parent company has cooperated with authorities in the investigation.
“We sympathize with all victims of abuse,” the company said. “We have zero tolerance for illegal material.”
Pornhub has recently come under fire after both Visa and Mastercard cut off payment privileges with MindGeek, the site’s parent company, and its advertising arm, TrafficJunky. The move from the payment processing companies followed a federal judge ruling in August that it was reasonable to conclude Visa knowingly ‘intended to help monetize child pornography’ on Pornhub and other sites operated by MindGeek in the Fleites v. MindGeek lawsuit.
The judge’s ruling came a month after MindGeek denied allegations from a nonprofit organization that more than half of its employees were likely laid off following the resignation of two of the company’s top executives on the same day.
MindGeek’s former chief executive officer, Feras Antoon, and ex-Chief Operating Officer David Tassillo resigned earlier this year after more than a decade of running the adult website company, though both remain shareholders.
Laila Mickelwait, founder and CEO of Justice Defense Fund, a nonprofit that has opposed Pornhub since it was accused of having ties with the sex trafficking of minors, advocated for a complete shutdown of the site and to hold all of its executives accountable after issuing a list of accusations.
“Pornhub was cut off from all credit cards, they deleted 80% of the site/10 million videos…Instagram shut down their 13 million follower account, the CEO & COO were forced to resign, 194 victims of child abuse and sex trafficking are suing them in lawsuits across the U.S./Canada…,” Mickelwait said in a tweet. “A bad day for Pornhub is a great day for humankind.”
Pornhub was cut off from all credit cards, they deleted 80% of the site/10 million videos…Instagram shut down their 13 million follower account, the CEO & COO were forced to resign, 194 victims of child abuse and sex trafficking are suing them in lawsuits across the US/Canada…
— Laila Mickelwait (@LailaMickelwait) November 13, 2022
More than 200 victims of image-based sexual abuse worldwide signed a letter supporting new legislation a Republican lawmaker introduced earlier this year that would require age and consent verification of those depicted in sexually explicit or intimate materials online.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced The Preventing Rampant Online Technological Exploitation and Criminal Trafficking Act, otherwise known as the PROTECT Act. The proposed legislation comes as lawmakers and victims look for solutions to solve the child sexual abuse imagery epidemic that has grown exponentially since the late 1990s when the Internet started becoming a household necessity.