Pornhub Lawsuit: Mother Claims Her 12-Year-Old Son’s Sexual Abuse Was Shared On Porn Website

WARNING: Some of the details in this story may be disturbing to some readers.

An Alabama mother has accused Pornhub’s parent company of profiting from a video showing her 12-year-old son’s sexual abuse and ignoring repeated requests from police to take down the video before it was taken down. did.

In a lawsuit filed last month in federal district court in Alabama by the boy’s mother, a man who uploaded offensive videos to Pornhub sued MindGeek, the site’s owner, based in Montreal, for a “minor allegedly entered into a deal to share ‘sexually violent pornographic material’ of children. ” Paid.

Rocky Shay Franklin, 36, of Greenville, Alabama, pleaded guilty on May 17 to two counts of child sexual exploitation, one count of propaganda of child pornography, and two counts. He was later sentenced to 40 years in prison. Regarding the distribution of child pornography.

The lawsuit follows that Alabama law enforcement received 67 cyber tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) linked to Franklin’s email address, leading to a search and investigation on October 17, 2019. Allegedly leading to seizure.

According to the complaint, “Franklin’s device was found to have sexually assaulted CV1 (a 12-year-old boy) and another minor child associated with CV1, as well as other unidentified minor children. A disturbing image has been revealed.”

The allegations in the lawsuit have not been validated in court.

The U.S. Department of Justice said it pleaded guilty to seducing two minors into engaging in sexually explicit acts in the summer of 2018 to make videos for online porn sites. .

“Franklin requested a monetary fee to advertise and distribute these files on his website,” the agency said in a news release last May.

The lawsuit said the sexual abuse occurred while Franklin lived with the boy’s mother and her minor children from July to October 2018.

Defendant signed up as ‘actor’ on porn site, lawsuit alleges

The lawsuit alleges that the American man was looking into MindGeek, a platform that pays people for their content, before uploading a video of him abusing a 12-year-old boy on May 11, 2019.

“Franklin’s web history reveals that Franklin investigated and discovered that Pornhub was paying ‘actors’ for content views. According to the website, ‘Viewshare’ is a premium program that allows his members to receive commissions based on the number of views uploaded by ‘actors’. received content,” the document claimed.

“An analysis of Franklin’s web history uncovered 121 entries containing open links to Pornhub.com that he provided, and MindGeek defendant created a downloadable version depicting Franklin’s sexually explicit CV1 victimization. I have procured the video for sale.”

The abuse videos, which sold for $5 to $20, have received more than 188,000 views on Pornhub, the lawsuit alleges.

MindGeek is headquartered in Montreal and has multiple satellite offices around the world.

Franklin and MindGeek are MG Freesites Ltd., MindGeek USA Inc., MG CY Holdings, MindGeek Content RT Limited, and Montreal-based “MindGeek.” The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

CTV News has reached out to MindGeek to address this allegation, but the company has yet to respond.

Police asked for the video to be removed three times

The lawsuit alleges that these online videos, which were posted on Pornhub, the world’s largest porn site, were stored for seven months before they were removed by law enforcement authorities, who then took them down to the owners of Pornhub. was asked repeatedly.

The document claimed police first requested the removal of the video around November 18, 2019. In his third request on December 12, 2019, he asked MindGeek to remove the video, which was eventually removed the next day.

“MindGeek Defendants seek to verify the identity and age of CV1, find out if they are underage or sex trafficking victims, and use the platform to eradicate image trafficking. Instead, MindGeek Defendants continue to use these images for commercial purposes worldwide, even after law enforcement notifies MindGeek Defendants that the images contain child pornography. to the public,” the lawsuit claimed.

MindGeek has been accused of turning a blind eye to the presence of sexually exploitative content on its website, resulting in the boy suffering “traumatic and life-altering physical, mental and emotional scars.” owes

“Defendant’s conduct was reckless and/or intentional, extreme and insane, and the public dissemination of sexually violent material of CV1, a minor child, for commercial purposes is prohibited. “It is so outrageous in its nature and so extreme in its extent that it transcends all. It is at the limit of decency and is regarded by civilized societies as cruel and utterly intolerable.”

Over the past few years, Pornhub’s parent company has faced multiple lawsuits, mostly filed in the United States, accusing the porn giant of hosting sexually explicit videos, sometimes of minors, without their consent. It has been accused of monetizing its content.

MindGeek has denied the allegations, stating that in the past it has a “zero tolerance” policy for child sexual abuse material and sexually explicit content shared without consent.

In a major blow to the site’s operations, Visa and Mastercard ended their relationship with MindGeek’s advertising division last August.

A California judge has dismissed a lawsuit from a woman who claims the company facilitated the distribution of child pornography on Pornhub and other MindGeek websites.

Last year, an Alberta woman told CTV News about her nightmarish ordeal to remove all traces of videotaped sexual assault from the world’s largest porn website.

“I’m not even conscious. I don’t move,” she told W5. “You can see there was no consent in the video.”

The two heads of Montreal’s porn empire, CEO Feras Antoon and Chief Operating Officer David Tassillo, resigned from MindGeek last June. In a statement, the company said the departure was planned months ago and had nothing to do with the recent media attention surrounding the Pornhub lawsuit.

Using files from Daniel J. Rowe of CTV Montreal