40 GirlsDoPorn victims sue Pornhub for hosting sex trafficking videos

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The plaintiffs are 61 more unnamed “Jane Doe” victims of Girls Do Porn, adding to the 60 that sued Pornhub in 2020 for similar claims. That’s what drew Donald “Trey” Brown III to Teen Line, where he was training before his suicide. It was a moment hundreds of women had been waiting for — and one many feared would never come. District Judge Janis Sammartino, who has sentenced all the other defendants in the GirlsDoPorn case other than website owner Michael James Pratt , whose case remains ongoing.

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• But like most things in the world, the reality was more disappointing than the glossy images presented online.
• Now with two children, she said she worries what she will tell them if the video ever surfaces again.
• Dozens of women were slapped and choked in the process of shooting their scene and would report vaginal bleeding afterward.
• Enright also called the operation a “fraudulent scheme” that targeted young women who “are mostly students with careers ahead of them who have only even considered Defendants’ solicitations to film a pornographic video due to some immediate and pressing financial need.”

This included one cameraman, whose face was never shown but whose voice was rife throughout the video… “[As] the only millennial female reporter to cover the trial in-person … I don’t think this trial could have had this result and I don’t think the Jane Does’ attorneys could have built a case and gotten them to agree to testify were it not for the #MeToo movement in the US. She sent a second request that month asking MindGeek to remove the video from Tube8.com, another MindGeek property, the lawsuit said. Her third takedown request came in May 2017 “after MindGeek continued to publish her video on PornHub.com,” the complaint said. According to the complaint, a video featuring one of the plaintiffs was the second most viewed video in 2014 on PornHub — a site that the complaint alleges had 42 billion views in 2019, making it the 10th most visited website in the world.

• Now, after a years-long legal battle, a California judge on Thursday not only ordered Girls Do Porn to pay the 22 women $12.7 million in damages, but took a rare — and potentially game-changing — step of granting them ownership rights to the content.
• The effects of social media may differ for teens based on many different factors in their life.
• Garcia and other members of the conspiracy took active steps to ensure the victims did not find out that he and the other members of the conspiracy operated GDP and GDT.
• The website and its operators were also sued by 22 women featured in its videos and a San Diego judge awarded the women nearly $13 million at the end of a months-long civil trial.
• Owner Michael Pratt remains a fugitive, with the FBI offering a $50,000 reward for a tip leading to his arrest,” Bianca Bruno, reporter at @CourthouseNews, added.

GirlsDoPorn videographer sentenced to 4 years in prison for sex trafficking

The lawsuit seeks at least $10 million for each plaintiff in compensatory and punitive damages and to bar Aylo from ever again hosting the victims’ videos. Garcia’s sentencing is a groundbreaking moment in the fight against sex trafficking, but it’s not a sufficient end to the story. Fifty GirlsDoPorn victims are now suing Pornhub, demanding more than $100 million in damages for their pain and suffering. GirlsDoPorn’s victims were doxxed, harassed and humiliated, and they felt they had a full-time job they never asked for – trying to get the videos of their trafficking removed from the internet.

First lawsuit filing

Despite providing contestants with a decent networking platform – and resources to stay in shape while earning relatively useless trinkets – the pageants that Megan participated in didn’t provide anything in the form of payment. Hence, her – being a young woman with little in the way of a support structure – taking part in an adult video to support herself through college. Judge Kevin Enright described in his findings how the need to keep finding young women new to the porn industry drove the “deceptive, coercive and threatening behaviour” used by the defendants. The women were coerced and tricked into making pornography that was released on to some of the biggest adult sites in the world without their consent, leaving some of them suicidal. The plaintiffs are seeking damages under Section 1595 of US law, which lets victims of trafficking bring civil actions against either perpetrators or people who benefit when they “knew or should have known” about the crimes.

GirlsDoPorn is an adult subscription service launched in 2006 by New Zealander Michael Pratt and operated by Ruben Garcia and Matthew Wolfe. Filmed in homes, hotels and trailer parks, videos on GirlsDoPorn specialise in promoting the image of the “ordinary” college girl who is making her first and only pornographic film. After the victims returned home, still believing that they would remain anonymous, Pratt and his co-defendants posted clips of the videos on heavily trafficked adult film sites, like Pornhub, to funnel traffic to the full-length versions of the videos on his website, GirlsDoPorn. Even after severing its partnership with GirlsDoPorn, MindGeek continues to profit from Plaintiffs’ videos to this day. As of December 12, 2020, MindGeek still hosts victims’ videos on its websites, including Plaintiffs.