Dozens of sex trafficking survivors and advocates are calling on leading credit card company Visa to cut ties with Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek, which hosts several major pornography websites.
“We call on Visa to take the appropriate step and permanently sever ties with MindGeek, the owner of Pornhub and numerous other hardcore pornography websites, which is enabling and profiting from child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, non-consensual content, and sexual exploitation,” the group of 62 survivors and advocates wrote in a letter to Visa CEO Alfred F. Kelly, Jr. “By processing payments for this entity, your corporation is enabling this abuse to continue.”
The letter comes a few months after Visa and Mastercard disallowed people to use their cards on Pornhub.
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Serena Fleites, who first gained notoriety in December, when she disclosed her story in a New York Times piece about child pornography on Pornhub, shared her testimony with Canadian lawmakers in February.
“It was also revealed that Pornhub did not report child sexual abuse materials (CSAM, i.e. child pornography) to U.S. or Canadian child protection agencies from 2008-2020,” the letter continued. “This is particularly egregious because Canada passed a law in 2011 requiring all companies in Canada to report CSAM.”
Following the Times piece, Pornhub removed millions of videos from its platform, putting in place some restrictions that had not been there previously.
Laila Mickelwait, an advocate for survivors of sex trafficking and the founder of the Traffickinghub petition, it still calling for the pornography website to be taken offline. She told Faithwire last year Pornhub “is profiting off of those crime scenes,” referring to illegal content hosted on the site.
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The letter to Kelly also noted that MindGeek’s websites promote racism with “channels” under names like “exploited black teens,” “exploited African immigrants,” “black-on-black crime,” and “African sex slaves.”
“Visa can now have no excuse of ignorance that they are processing payments for one of the world’s most prolific sexual exploiters,” the letter read. “Visa must stop continuing to support the infrastructure of MindGeek — a decision that not only legitimizes a racist, criminally violent, and degrading company, but also leaves your corporation open to liability as well.”