MUM Laila Micklewait’s life changed for ever when she stumbled across the story of a missing teenager whose abuse ordeal had been shared on Pornhub.
The 15-year-old, from Florida, was finally rescued from her tormentor after a year of hell.
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But not before footage of her being repeatedly molested was uploaded to the sex site, where a user recognised her.
Christopher Johnson, then 30, was prosecuted for lewd and lascivious battery after she was found in his apartment, but Pornhub faced no action.
Laila, 41, who had two young children of her own, was left sickened by the 2019 case — and she was even more horrified to learn that Pornhub was littered with illegal clips depicting rape, sex assault and child abuse, which anonymous users had uploaded with no questions asked.
And so began one woman’s crusade to bring down the billion dollar empire.
While she was already an activist against human trafficking, Laila had no idea how many abuse videos featured on Pornhub.
Her determined campaign to have them removed led to a boycott of the site by major credit card firms — which left bosses no choice but to delete the dodgy clips or miss out on online payments.
But she has refused to rest until the platform collapses completely.
Because of the campaign, Laila and her family became the target of organised criminals determined to make her back off.
Yet in spite of the fear tactics that have been used against her, Laila bravely told The Sun: “I won’t shut up until they shut down.”
‘Sinister death threats’
The determined American mum’s fight began four years ago, inspired by her dad Wisam, who would challenge racists targeting his family because of their Arabic heritage.
Father and daughter had watched a documentary together about sex trafficking when she was in her teens and, when Wisam died in 2014, she vowed to keep fighting injustice.
Laila, who was raised in southern California and is married to Joel, had two young children — Jed, who was barely three months old, and Lily Rose, three — when she first took on the prolific sex site.
That fact that her sister had been molested only fuelled her resolve to stand up for vulnerable victims.
Laila decided to test Pornhub’s upload function and found there were no checks to ensure footage did not feature abuse or minors.
There was no verification of age, no verification of consent
Laila
She revealed: “I found anybody could upload home-made sex videos, anonymously, in under ten minutes, to the site with just an email address.
“There was no verification of age, no verification of consent.”
Since the site’s launch in 2007, users had been able to share their own “amateur” content, which would allegedly be checked and verified by moderators.
But Laila, the founder and CEO of the Traffickinghub movement, was told just 30 people were expected to view thousands of videos each per shift.
Court documents showed a backlog of 706,425 videos by 2020.
At one point the site had a download button, allowing users to make a copy and keep any video they chose.
It left those who featured in explicit footage with no idea who had saved their image.
Launching her bid to cripple the X-rated site in February 2020, Laila wrote online: “Pornhub is a trafficker’s dream come true.
Launching her bid to cripple the X-rated site in February 2020, Laila wrote online: “Pornhub is a trafficker’s dream come true. The site just let me upload content in eight clicks, all that’s needed is an email address. NO ID, NO ‘CONSENT’ form — nothing. Stop with the ‘all women on Pornhub are consenting adults’. IT’S A LIE . . .”
From that tweet, her campaign to hold the sex site accountable snowballed.
Laila even started a petition to shut down Pornhub, which now has more than 2.3million signatures.
By December 2020, 80 per cent of the videos on the site had been removed.
But she claims the fight placed her in the firing line of Pornhub owner, MindGeek.
Laila told how she had her home address shared online — a malicious practice known as doxing — and was chillingly warned she and her family would be raped.
Amid the daily barrage, she also found sinister death threats.
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At one point cops even probed a false allegation that Laila had distributed child sexual abuse material, but found no evidence to support it.
In her book, Takedown: Inside The Fight To Shut Down Pornhub And Expose The Dark Side Of A Tech Giant, Laila wrote: “I had prostitution escort ads made in my name, my face superimposed on to pornographic images circulated online and threats.
“MindGeek has hired ‘journalists’ to write hit pieces against me and the cause, sending them around to news outlets wanting to report on my work in an effort to smear and discredit the growing movement.”
Possibly as part of the campaign, her sister’s intimate photos were stolen from her hacked iCloud, and online her mum’s address was shared — with a note saying it was a brothel.
Investigators helping Laila believed it to be the work of MindGeek in a bid to silence her.
Laila said: “As a mum, I have two young children, and they did not sign up for this.
“It was a real struggle to make the decision to not stop.
“I’m not going to be quiet just because I’m scared or because there’s intimidation and threats. I just said, ‘There’s no choice. Justice is too important’. If it were for one victim, it would be worth it, but there were thousands in this case.”
While the threats never escalated to violence, Laila claims a relative had their bank accounts hacked and money taken out.
What I was going through was nothing compared to the victims around the world who had their lives shattered by this site
Laila
And victims claimed they were physically assaulted for sharing their stories.
“What I was going through was nothing compared to the victims around the world who had their lives shattered by this site,” she said.
“I found the strength to go on thinking about the people whose abuse had been immortalised online.
“They’ll never get that video off the internet, nor forget what happened. I could press pause on the abuse and step away. I wanted to keep going for their sake, to stop it happening.”
Laila was an established activist working for Exodus Cry, a non-profit organisation aimed at stopping commercial sexual exploitation, when she started the campaign against Pornhub.
‘Resolve to continue’
As she researched the site and considered ways of making it admit to hosting violent content, Laila had to view hundreds of sickening videos of women and children being molested.
Despite her disgust, she forced herself to keep watching so she could help the victims of abuse.
She said: “One of the things that helped me stay grounded in reality, and have this resolve to continue, was to compare the fact that I am a witness to these crimes. The way I was able to cope with this journey was this idea that these crimes needed a witness to be able to say, ‘This happened, it is wrong’. Every abuser has to pay for what happened.”
Victims, including some from the UK, were passed the contact details of a lawyer, who brought a lawsuit for them worth $500million.
But in a shock twist, it was a former owner of Pornhub, Fabian Thylmann — dubbed the “Zuckerberg of porn” — who gave Laila a tip that would lead to a huge triumph.
Fabian had sold the site, but contacted Laila over social media to help her take it down.
She said: “When he came forward claiming he wanted to help I was really suspicious.
“But he confirmed that going for the card companies would work.”
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With help, Laila was able to pressure firms including Visa, Mastercard and Delta into withdrawing their services from Pornhub because of the illegal content. It was a huge victory.
In 2022, Pornhub’s chief executive officer Feras Antoon, and chief operating officer David Tassillo, quit.
The site denied their resignations were linked to Laila’s probe and vowed they had “zero tolerance” for child sex abuse material on their platform.
But the knowledge that Pornhub was still active tormented Laila.
She said she was devastated to discover that credit card companies still supported the site’s advertising arm just weeks after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a December 2020 story claiming Pornhub was “infested with rape videos”, adding: “It monetizes child rapes.”
She said: “I learned that the credit card companies went back to processing Pornhub’s advertising.
“For me, that was the most shocking and discouraging moment.”
Some of the victims Nicholas spoke to were so traumatised by having their videos posted on the sex site that they had tried to take their own lives.
And sadly, today, Laila claims Pornhub still features abuse content.
She said: “They have, under extreme duress, taken steps to try to stop it. But it’s not sufficient to eliminate illegal content from the site.”
A spokesperson for Pornhub’s parent company Aylo said: “Laila Mickelwait’s Takedown is just her latest attempt in a long history of attacking adult content, discriminating against sex workers, and attempting to censor what consenting adults choose to watch, all done by propagating proven falsehoods and making dangerously inflammatory accusations.
“These efforts seem to be part of a larger agenda that includes shutting down the entire adult industry, prohibiting consenting adults from exercising their rights to free expression and bodily autonomy as well as preventing sex workers from earning a living.
“In actuality, according to all data and analyses from credible and verifiable third parties, Pornhub is a leading platform at combating child sexual abuse material, and maintains a Trust and Safety program that surpasses that of any other major platform on the internet.
“For as long as adult content and sex work have existed, extremists have organized campaigns against them, often under the guise of anti-trafficking efforts.
“That is why it is so important for us to fight for freedom of expression and support the hundreds of thousands of performers who rely on our platform to earn a living, while also remaining at the forefront of internet safety and content moderation.
“We will never let extremists dictate what consenting adults should and should not do in their own privacy.”
- Takedown: Inside The Fight To Shut Down Pornhub For Child Abuse, Rape And Sex Trafficking (Penguin Random House) is published tomorrow.
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