Officials announce arrests in sex trafficking case in northern Virginia
US Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger holds a press conference to announce arrests in a significant investigation involving gang-controlled sex trafficking in northern Virginia.
A petition to "shut down Pornhub" has reached more than 2.1 million signatures after a Tuscaloosa, Ala., man was charged with producing and posting porn with a minor on the website.
Authorities arrested 27-year-old Michael Terrell Williams on Sept. 15 after an 18-year-old woman told police about a 2018 video on Pornhub that featured her performing sexual acts on Williams, who had a verified Pornhub account, when she was 16, WBMA reported.
The Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office told Fox News on Tuesday that Williams has been released on bond.
Michael Dinsmore of anti-trafficking campaign Exodus Cry told Fox News in a statement that Williams' account was apparently verified through the website's ModelHub program, "through which Pornhub earns 35 [percent] of the sale of content."
"Any commercial sex act involving a minor is by definition sex trafficking according to the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The monetized child pornography video was up for two years with over two thousand views," Dinsmore added.
PORNHUB FACES SCRUTINY, CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION AMID TRAFFICKING CONCERNS
Pornhub makes a 35% sales commission on videos posted through ModelHub, which allows users to sell videos directly from their Pornhub accounts, according to the website's Help Center.
Search screenshot displays BigTankDog's Modelhub profile (Credit: Exodus Cry)
Search screenshot shows BigTankDog's Pornhub profile with monetized content (Credit: Exodus Cry)
The website cooperated with investigators to confirm that the video showed the woman performing sex acts on Williams when she was 16. The video was viewed more than 2,700 times over two years, WBMA reported, citing court documents.
"Pornhub has a steadfast commitment to eradicating any and all illegal content, including under-age material, and actively works to employ state of the art, comprehensive measures to protect its platform from such content," a Pornhub spokesperson said in a statement.
He added those measures include a team of human moderators that manually review "every single upload;" a system for flagging, reviewing and removing "all illegal material;" age-verification tools and various automated technologies including "CSAI Match, YouTube’s proprietary technology for combating Child Sexual Abuse Imagery content online," as well as a number of others.
ANTI-PORNHUB PETITION GAINS STEAM, ACCUSES ADULT VIDEO GIANT OF FACILITATING SEX TRAFFICKING
Williams' verified account on Pornhub displayed a photo of his Alabama driver's license, as well as a photo of himself holding a sign that read, "BigTankDog on pornhub.com," according to WBMA. He is being held at the Tuscaloosa County jail on $75,000 bond.
Exodus Cry's anti-Pornhub petition details several similar stories of abused women and minors who have been featured on the website.
"Pornhub, the world's largest and most popular porn site, has been repeatedly caught enabling, hosting, and profiting from videos of child rape, sex trafficking, and other forms of non-consensual content exploiting women and minors. We're calling for Pornhub to be shut down and its executives held accountable for these crimes," the petition states.
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