Two women have told Sky News they were left feeling ashamed and suicidal after explicit videos of them were posted on the world’s biggest online porn website – they claim without their consent.
In a legal case filed in the US, more than 30 women have accused MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub, of profiting from non-consensual sex videos.
Their lawyer says the women are suing for damages which could amount to “hundreds of millions of dollars” if successful, and he believes it is a moment of reckoning for the online porn industry.
Leigh Nicol is one of three British women involved in the case. A video she filmed of herself having sex aged 18 was stolen following an iCloud hack and, without her permission, posted on sites owned by MindGeek, a company believed to be worth more than £1.2bn.
“Even at this point, I look at myself in the mirror and I feel sick because that’s no longer private to me,” she said.
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“Because a large part of the population has seen something that they shouldn’t have seen. There’s shame, there’s embarrassment, there’s disgust, sickness, there’s doubts that I’m not good enough.
“I feel like no one would ever potentially want to actually be my future husband, because I’ve got these videos attached to me.”
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Leigh claims she tried repeatedly to have the video removed from Pornhub, a website which has 130 million users each day – more than Netflix or Amazon.
She says that even when the video was taken down it would be reposted elsewhere.
“My question was why and how is this allowed,” she said.
“This isn’t legal. I haven’t put this out there and I’m trending on some of the world’s biggest adult websites.”
MindGeek says it is investigating the complaint filed in California.
In a statement, the company said: “Pornhub has zero tolerance for illegal content and investigates any complaint or allegation made about content on our platforms.
“The fact is, Pornhub has in place the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history, which include the banning of uploads from unverified users, expanding our moderation processes, and cooperating with dozens of non-profit organisations around the world.”
Of the 34 women suing the company, 14 said they were underage in videos uploaded to Pornhub, and 14 were victims of people charged with or convicted of sex crimes.
One woman, from America’s Midwest, told Sky News she was sex trafficked around different states and videos filmed of sexual encounters were later posted onto MindGeek websites.
“I was homeless and very vulnerable. If I didn’t make enough money, he would rape me and beat me and put me down,” she said.
“I didn’t ask to put those videos up there, I didn’t want them put up there and it shouldn’t be happening.
“There were times I was suicidal. I was very depressed and I suffered with PTSD from all this.
“I feel very emotional as this has been a long time coming,” she added. “I want them to be held accountable, because this is women’s lives.”
The legal team representing the 34 women is led by lawyer Michael Bowe, who represented former US president Donald Trump during the investigation into alleged Russian interference into the 2016 election.
“This has been hidden in plain sight,” he said.
“You get away with it until the world’s eyes turn on you, and you don’t have an answer. I think it’s bigger than the ‘Me Too’ movement, it’s more serious.
“You have a handful of men who are making a lot of money exploiting God knows how many hundreds of thousands of women.”
Students, charged and released with a date in court, are here now to collect their belongings. They’re missing bags, belts, shoes, all lost in the chaos of the night before.
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From the very heart of the protest encampment, our cameras had captured the chaos.
Officers moving in. Tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse. Stun grenades to disorientate.
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They were scenes which have stirred an already fevered debate about Israel and Gaza, yes, but about much more too. About America, about policing, and about free speech too.
President Biden said yesterday: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest.”
‘Wrong’ say the protesters. Their movement, they say, is the very essence of protest; of civil disobedience which is threaded through US college campus history.
They reject any notion that they are threatening or violent. Yet the deeply divisive history of the Israel-Palestine conflict ensures that the beholder will so often be offended by the actions of the other side.
It was the students perceived antisemitism through their pro-Palestinian slogans which had drawn a group of pro-Israel protesters to the encampment earlier in the week.
The chaos of that night was reflected in a statement by the university’s student radio station which has been covering every twist.
“Counter protestors used bear mace, professional-grade fireworks and clubs to brutalize hundreds of our peers, UCLA turned a blind eye. Police were not called until hours into the onslaught and stood aside for over an hour as counter-protestors enacted racial, physical and chemical violence,” the statement from the UCLA Radio Managerial team said.
Watching the clear-up after the nighttime police sweep of the protesters I spotted two people embracing. A young man and an older woman.
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Professor recalls violent arrest at protest
It turned out to be a thread of history. One was a student who’d been arrested the night before.
The other was a student from a past time. Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history.
“I’m so proud of these people here. I’m so proud,” she told me.
“You know the civil unrest of the students back in ’68 and it continued for several years, it actually changed the course of the Vietnam War and hopefully this is going to do the same thing.”
But then, back at the police station, a conversation that hints at the wider challenges for America.
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‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country. For him, no government is better than any on offer.
“The problem with our system is that we can’t rely on the police, we can’t rely on the military to keep us safe.
“When we need to make our voices heard, we need to make them heard, and the only way to do that without being repressed is by keeping each other safe and I think that last night and the last few months have really exemplified that,” he told me.
These protests are about more than Gaza. They are aligning a spectrum of dissent.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.
Ms Wilson bought her most recent ticket at Family Food Mart in the US town of Mansfield and the shop will receive a $10,000 (£7,900) bonus for its sale of the ticket, according to the Massachusetts State Lottery.
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She bought her first $1m winning ticket at Dubs’s Discount Liquors in the same town.