The lawsuit claims that Pornhub owner Mindgeek knowingly benefited from Girls Do Porn videos on Pornhub and failed to moderate the images on its network of adult content sites.
The 40 plaintiffs are demanding more than $40 million in damages along with legal fees and the money Mindgeek earned off their videos.
Girls Do Porn was shut down by the FBI in 2019 after a court ruled that its owners were guilty of coercing women into having sex on video, as well as lying about whether those videos would be shared online.
“As a proximate result of MindGeek’s knowing financial benefit and participation in GirlsDoPorn’s sex trafficking venture, Plaintiffs have suffered damages, including, but not limited to, severe emotional distress, significant trauma, attempted suicide, and social and familial ostracization,” the complaint states.
The complaint, which was filed yesterday, claims that as early as 2009, “and definitely by fall 2016,” Mindgeek knew Girls Do Porn was coercing and intimidating models into having sex on camera.
The suit points the finger at Mindgeek for much of the harm the victims’ suffered. It presents several claims that Pornhub failed to take down videos, even after the women involved pleaded with the company to remove them.
“Im going to kill myself if this stays up here,” one of the Jane Doe plaintiffs claims to have written in Pornhub’s video takedown portal. “I was scammed and told this was only going to be on DVDs in another country. Please im begging you please ill [sic] pay!”
The complaint says that the video remained up until Girls Do Porn’s owners were arrested in October 2019. The suit claims that Mindgeek received “dozens, if not hundreds” of similar takedown requests.
Pornhub announced major changes last week, including only accepting uploads from verified accounts and banning downloads, following reports that it was “infested” with child abuse and rape videos. However, the move appears to have come too late as Mastercard and Visa stopped processing payments for the site in the days after the changes were announced.
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