With signers from 192 countries, anti-trafficking expert Laila Mickelwait‘s “Traffickinghub” petition to shut down Pornhub for allegedly enabling and profiting from the sex trafficking and rape of women and children on the site has surpassed one million signatures. The petition is based on evidence of numerous alleged cases of real videos of child rape, child trafficking, adult trafficking, abuse, and exploitation monetized on Pornhub. Over 300 anti-trafficking, child protection, and women’s rights organizations have endorsed the campaign, and it has been featured in hundreds of media articles both nationally and internationally, as well as mobilized a large protest in front of Pornhub’s main office in Montreal, Canada on International Women’s Day.
Hundreds of people each year are the victims of sex trafficking in Arizona, according to estimates from the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
The campaign has compelled legislators in Canada and the United States to call for federal level investigations into Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek. Inspired by the petition, U.S. Senator Ben Sasse released a letter to attorney general William Barr, demanding that the U.S. Department of Justice open an investigation into Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek. A multi-party group of Canadian members of parliament also sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, asking the Government of Canada to investigate Pornhub and MindGeek.
The non-religious, non-partisan campaign to shut down the world’s largest porn site for allegedly cashing in on the rape and trafficking of women and children has even drawn support from professionals in the adult entertainment industry, who released a manifesto and a change.org petition supporting the Traffickinghub campaign and rejecting Pornhub and its illegal, exploitative practices.
The grassroots movement to shut down Pornhub was sparked by the February 9 release of an op-ed, written by campaign founder Laila Mickelwait, exposing the crimes on Pornhub and calling for justice. The following day, the BBC published the harrowing story of Rose Kalemba who, at 14 years old, was taken at knifepoint and raped for 12 hours, after which the videos of her torture were uploaded to Pornhub by her attackers. She says she begged Pornhub to remove the videos for six months but it was not until she posed as a lawyer and threatened legal action that Pornhub finally removed them.
Another recent example was the case of a 15-year-old girl from Florida, who was missing for a year and was located after 58 videos of her alleged sexual abuse and rape were found monetized on Pornhub. The face of the child’s alleged attacker was seen in the videos and matched by law enforcement to convenience store surveillance footage. He was eventually found and charged with a felony. Pornhub had verified the child victim and accidentally admitted to complicity in her trafficking, but later deleted their admission.
“All it takes to upload content to Pornhub is an email address—no government-issued ID is required. Pornhub doesn’t bother to reliably verify the age or the consent of the millions featured in the videos it hosts and profits from, yet it monetizes those videos with no questions asked. The site is set up for exploitation and is infested with videos of the real rape, trafficking, abuse, and exploitation of women and children. We have significant evidence and it is just the tip of the iceberg,” asserts Mickelwait. “Shut it down.”
The full story, along with a way to sign the petition, is available at traffickinghub.com. For up-to-the-minute updates on the progress of the campaign, follow Laila Mickelwait on Twitter.
