Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 19th, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

This is the 20th meeting of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. We are undertaking our study on the continuation of the protection of privacy and reputation on online video platforms such as Pornhub. I will remind members that this meeting is televised.

Before we do that, we will proceed, as was decided by committee members, immediately to committee business, break for the votes and then return to hear witness testimony.

We'll move now to committee business.

Colleagues, I'm getting a point of order.... Mr. Angus is on my list first. I'm not sure if it's a point of order. I do have a couple of notes that I'll maybe just jump into and then we'll turn to members.

Victor Li and Sophia Marquez have both indicated to the chair that they do not wish to appear. Committee members had asked them to appear. The committee members have also indicated that they would like to subpoena these witnesses if in fact they refuse to attend. Those have been my instructions. I just want to turn it back to committee members to determine if in fact they want to proceed, if each member wants to proceed with the summoning of these witnesses. If so, I guess we should have a discussion with regard to that.

I'll turn to Mr. Angus. I believe he has indicated he'd like to speak to this.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I want to thank you also for the recognition that we want to hear from our witnesses today. We want to do it in a respectful manner. Given all the balls that are in the air in the House, to give them the time is really important.

As for this issue of committee business, we have been attempting to finalize the WE study in Parliament for seven months. Mr. Victor Li is the key financial officer of the Kielburger organization with their multiple lists of companies. This was a group that came to the Canadian government and was going to receive between $500 million and $900 million based on its ability to deliver the programs in a fast and efficient manner, and questions have been raised.

We need to know its financial structure. How does this group work? How is the money flowing? I would find it very shocking if a financial officer of a major charity simply refused to testify to Parliament and that its government relations officer refused to testify to Parliament. If we were dealing with an international organization like Oxfam or Red Cross and there were questions, you could bet that within five minutes its financial representatives would be more than willing to appear at our committee, yet seven months in, we have had obstruction, refusals and denials to participate.

I think we need to get this committee study finished. We had consensus before on issuing summons if necessary. I don't think doing that would create much controversy for us, because it is also about respect for the work of Parliament. If we need it, I have a motion that I could present, which would say, “That the committee summon Mr. Victor Li and Ms. Sophie Marquez and that they be required to appear and give evidence before the committee on matters relating to the study on questions of conflict of interest in lobbying in relation to the pandemic spending at the date or time of the chair's discretion”.

I think if we could get that agreed before the vote, then we would know that we could continue to move on so that we could finish this important study on WE and the Canada student summer job grant dispute.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

On a point of order, Chair, I just want to make sure the standing order is being followed and that unanimous consent was asked for. I just want you to clarify that we can continue with the committee while the bell is going.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

That's right. I did ask if anybody objected to it. Nobody indicated that they objected to it, so we proceeded. The meeting has been called to order. Thank you.

On the motion that has been brought forward, is there debate? I have two members who have indicated their desire to speak. I suspect it's on this motion.

I will go to Mr. Viersen first.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to say that I fully support Mr. Angus's motion. I'm appalled that we now have to work on scheduling another meeting after we had confirmed these witnesses. I'm looking forward to the committee continuing on to get to these witnesses. This is a charitable organization that gets special tax treatment from the Government of Canada. Surely we should be able to hear from it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Madame Gaudreau, we'll turn to you.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you.

My understanding was that, if their answer was no, we would go ahead and issue a summons, as is standard committee practice. I think we should be able to settle this quickly, without a motion. We can proceed if everyone agrees.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, members.

It looks like there is consensus from committee members to do this. Seeing no objections, the motion now carries.

(Motion agreed to)

Colleagues, it appears as though we may have a little more time.

I'm hoping that the first report of the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics was circulated to the members. I believe this is a good recollection of the meeting that we held as a subcommittee on February 11. Have members had a chance to review that?

Does anybody want to speak to that report? If not, is it the committee's will to approve that report?

Mr. Angus, I see you putting up your hand.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I think we had a good meeting of the subcommittee. I hope people who had a chance to read it will appreciate the direction.

Let's adopt it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

There's been a motion to adopt the first report. Is there any objection?

We'll move to a vote. Does anybody object to the adoption of the first report?

Not seeing any objection, the first report is adopted. Thanks, colleagues.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

I'll turn to committee members. Is there any other committee business that we haven't covered, or business that members would like to...?

Mr. Viersen, I see your hand.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Chair. There was a discussion about the production of documents from Pornhub or MindGeek. I think there was a discussion at the subcommittee about which documents we were going to be asking for. I think that was all agreed upon.

I was just wondering if we need to provide direction to the clerk to request those documents.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Those documents have been requested. I don't know if there's an update other than that they've been requested.

Madam Clerk, was there an additional update to committee members with regard to that?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Miriam Burke]

No, I'm told [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

It doesn't seem there's an update, but we will circle back to that as we get feedback from that organization. I'm certain committee members will have some opinions in terms of how we proceed on that front.

Colleagues, I will suspend this meeting and allow members to vote. I do apologize to our witnesses who are waiting to testify. We thank you for your patience. We will be back as soon as possible.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Colleagues, I'm going to call this meeting back to order.

We have had some discussions with regard to the first three witnesses. We did want to allow them the right to determine the way in which they would appear. To accommodate as many questions as possible, they have agreed to go in succession. The three of them will appear one after another. That will allow members to ask all three of them different questions at the same time, so that will allow a bit more of a free flow.

This afternoon, Ms. Victoria Galy has joined us.

Thank you so much for joining us.

We also have two other witnesses, who will appear as guest one and guest two.

Members, would you please refer to them as guest one and guest two? That will assist us in determining who members are speaking to.

Without further ado, we will turn to Ms. Vicky Galy.

Thank you so much for being patient. We appreciate your patience and certainly apologize for the delay in starting the committee back up again. We will turn to you for your opening statement. If you'll do that, we will then turn to the other guests and then we will have some questions for all three of you.

Ms. Galy.

[Victoria Galy, As an Individual]

Thank you.

First, thank you for having me and for allowing me to participate. My statement is a little lengthy. I'll try to get through it as fast as I can and not take up too much of your time.

My name is Victoria Galy. I live in Hendersonville, Tennessee. I'm a victim of sex trafficking under the legal definition in Tennessee in the United States. I've had numerous non-consensual pornographic images and videos of me posted on Pornhub.com.

Beginning in 2018, I found the videos and reported them to Pornhub. Many of the videos were labelled “teen” and were clearly of a person who was drugged and/or intoxicated, as evidenced by the occurrences in the videos. Most of these videos were made by an ex of mine on a trip we took to Las Vegas, Nevada.

Upon finding these videos in 2018, the first thing I tried to do was to flag them. This led me nowhere. The videos were not removed. The next thing I tried to do was to report the videos. I found out that you had to create an account in order to do so. I had to provide my full name and my email address. I was hesitant, as I wasn't the type of person who watched porn or subscribed to anything like that. I didn't really want my name or my email address associated with it. However, I reluctantly set up the account and began to try to report the videos.

In 2018 I reported approximately 30 videos. Only three of those videos were removed at that time. For the remaining videos, I was told that I needed to submit a DMCA takedown notice to Pornhub before they would remove them. I wasn't familiar with what that meant or even what a DMCA takedown notice was.

As a result of the initial trauma in finding these videos, I suffered great emotional distress, resulting in what my doctor has now defined as a dissociative condition wherein I basically removed the memory of these videos and events from my present recollection, as it was too painful for me to process. It's called dissociative amnesia. People who suffer from this escape reality in ways that are involuntary and unhealthy, which causes problems with functioning in everyday life. This was obvious in my behaviour and my interactions with friends, family and co-workers from 2018 to 2020. I completely lost my self-worth and was engaging in risky behaviour that was very different from my typical self prior to 2018.

It wasn't until the summer of 2020, when these flashbacks and memories began to return, that I sought treatment with a psychiatrist and a sexual abuse trauma therapist. That is when I received my diagnosis and began taking medication for depression and PTSD. I have been undergoing cognitive processing therapy and making leaps and bounds in my recovery, but this is the hardest thing I've ever had to face in my life.

At times I was suicidal. After 16 years with one law firm as a paralegal, I had to take a leave of absence as I could no longer function on a daily basis nor make it through even one day at work. I left my house. I moved in with my mother for approximately four weeks so she could help me care for my children. I have a 16-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter with Down syndrome. I also suffered from severe anxiety and fear. I didn't feel safe. I was having intense nightmares, irritability, anger, embarrassment and such physical symptoms as pounding heart, nausea, etc. I lost at least 20 to 30 pounds. I couldn't eat. I was very sick.

In August of 2020, when my memories began to return, I began contacting Pornhub again regarding these videos. Upon visiting their website, I found that there had been many more videos made over that two- to three-year period. I reported many videos, including the ones claimed by Vicky Lust. There were approximately 60 to 65 videos. These were made by my ex, Brandon. Some of the videos were removed, but the ones that were claimed by Vicky Lust were not. I was told that they were claimed by a verified model and that they would not remove them. I sent them numerous emails explaining that the videos were of me and my ex, Brandon, but they refused to listen. I sent them photos of my birthmark, pointed out that I said Brandon's name in at least one of the videos, and even submitted photos of my various body parts to prove that it was me. They still refused to remove them.

I contacted their legal department directly through the email [e-mail], providing a clear PowerPoint presentation detailing why it was me in the videos and not the couple claiming them—who I found out later was in Helsinki, Finland—named Laura and Lauri. I received no response to that email.

In addition to the clear PowerPoint presentation that was provided to them, the comments that were posted and deleted on the Vicky Lust videos evidenced their non-consensual nature. It was not until after December 2020, when I filed a civil lawsuit against them pro se, I emailed them a copy and the article came out in The New York Times titled “The Children of Pornhub”, that they have now, at least temporarily, suspended these videos. They are of course all over the Internet now, having been downloaded by who knows how many users, and on a plethora of other websites. I will never be able to remove these videos. There were over eight million views just on Pornhub alone. To think of the amount of money that Pornhub has made off my trauma, date rape and sexual exploitation makes me sick to my stomach.

On Tuesday of this week, Chantelle Pittarelli, the director of legal and business affairs, finally responded to my emails. He or she refused to admit that it was me in the videos, but noted that they had decided at this time, due to the seriousness of my allegations, to delete the Vicky Lust account and that they fingerprinted the content to prevent future uploads to their site.

This, however, does nothing to remove them from the other sites all over the Internet, nor take back any of the destruction that this has caused in my life. Had they done this back in 2018 when I first contacted them, my life would look much different now. They never cared about my well-being, and they've profited from these illegal activities. I've had Facebook friends send me messages with links stating things like “Vicky, this looks like you”. I've been stopped at my home by an unknown man on at least two occasions and even propositioned by a stranger on Facebook asking if I had considered his offer to make videos. When I asked him, “What videos?”, as I did not know this man nor to what offer he was referring, he never responded.

Not only does Pornhub make it difficult or impossible to get these non-consensual videos removed, they make it difficult to sue them, insisting that I serve them with my lawsuit in Cyprus. Having been a paralegal for over 16 years, I've familiarized myself somewhat with the Hague Convention and have initiated service of process by postal means, as allowed under the convention for Cyprus residents. However, the typical victim would not have such means or familiarity.

Pornhub has training blogs and articles for teaching models and/or perpetrators at being successful on their platform. They recommend virtual private networks and the best editing apps to use and so on, which makes it more difficult for victims to prove their cases and get justice. In my particular case, my ex used a fake foreskin to appear uncircumcised in the videos, which caused the police department to not believe me and the district attorney to decline prosecution, despite me later providing clear evidence of this. Pornhub, to this day, has active videos showing this “toy” being used, which only educates predators in the ways of avoiding detection by authorities.

As stated in The New York Times article that I mentioned, I too feel like Pornhub has become my human trafficker, and they have been relentless in doing so. The background profile photo for Vicky Lust prior to August 2020, when I reported it to the police, was a full-body photo of me, naked, with only a mask across my nose and part of my eyes, similar to a Mardi Gras mask. I have been recognized in public by many people who wouldn't say from where it was and tormented emotionally.

If it weren't for the help of my amazing therapist and her cognitive processing therapy, I would not be here before you today, but I refuse to be a victim any further. I will advocate for myself and for all of the other victims who may not be able to or may not want to stand up, or who may have committed suicide, as we will never know. For me personally, I came very close to suicide, and I have never been so broken as I have been throughout this process.

I have been forced to stand up alone and fight Pornhub, so when I heard about your inquiry into the ethics of this company, I gladly came forward, willing to testify openly about my situation. I appreciate being allowed to participate in this process and the possibility of effecting change and/or holding this company accountable.

Thank you for hearing from me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Ms. Galy. I know that it's difficult to get everything into the limited time, but I really appreciate the work you did to do that.

I will turn to our guest number one now.

Guest number one, thank you for being here. We'll turn to you for your opening statement.

[Witness 1, As an Individual]

When I was 24, I met someone I thought was a really nice guy. I married him, and as soon as he thought I was stuck, he stopped being nice pretty quickly. In April 2020, I moved away from our home to be safe, and obviously, we're not together anymore.

During our relationship, I had let him take some pictures. I was uncomfortable at first, because I had never been in any picture like that, but I trusted him and I wanted to keep him happy. It wasn't until August of 2020 that I discovered those private photos had been uploaded to porn sites, including Pornhub.

I was upset about the photos, but it was about to get worse. Finding the photos led me to a video. I did not know the video existed. I found out about it by watching it on Pornhub. In the title of the video, it says I'm sleeping. The tags include “sleeping” and “sleeping pills”. Whether I was asleep or drugged is impossible to know after the fact, but what is clear in the video is that I am not conscious and there is nothing to suggest consent. The video is clearly homemade and was uploaded by an anonymous email address. This is the content that the Pornhub moderators supposedly viewed and decided belonged on their porn site. My video had been uploaded in August of 2017, so by the time I found it, it had been active on Pornhub for over three years, and I had no idea.

I didn’t try to get the video down right away because I showed it to the police the next morning, and they told me to leave everything until they were done with it. However, sometime between August 16 and 19, the Pornhub video became no longer playable. It said “technical difficulties”. About that same time, I noticed that Pornhub was pulling their tags that directly indicated non-consensual content. For example, if you searched “sleeping pills” in early September, it didn't return any results. This was, of course, not the case in mid-August, so my best theory is that the video disappeared as they tried to clean up those kinds of tags.

In all that time, the video did not get flagged or removed. The viewers, rather than being turned away by sexual assault videos, were actively searching out that content. The tags made this possible, and they knew what they were watching before they clicked. It is a profound betrayal to know that thousands of men saw your assault and not only did nothing to flag it but actively sought it out and enjoyed it.

On Pornhub, there is a comment section, so the night I found my video, I also got to read a man describe in graphic physical detail just how much he enjoyed himself watching it. On another site, thousands of men watched my video and instead of flagging it, they awarded it top-rated for a certain body part. This video is not a one-off that slipped through a filter. Sexual assault is not an anomaly on the porn sites; it is a genre. This leaves little incentive for these sites to moderate such content.

To give an idea of the scope of the spread, as of early January 2021—after the December purge, and after the RCMP had removed a bunch for me—googling the name of my Pornhub video still returned over 1,900 results. One cause of the spread is, of course, users downloading it and reuploading it. There are definitely some of these floating around, but the most significant way my video was spread was through links. MindGeek did this by putting links to my Pornhub video on their other sites as a cheap way of adding content to those sites. Many of the other third party sites also use this method, so they too linked to my video on Pornhub. Of the 1,900 search results, Pornhub is the source for all of them.

The upside with linking is that when the video is removed from Pornhub, it's not playable on these other sites either. The downside is that Pornhub creates a thumbnail image file for all the videos uploaded to its site, and this image can be downloaded even if the video is only a link. There are still quite a few of these thumbnails on porn sites and in search engine caches. The thumbnail is still a picture of me naked. I don't want it on the Internet. Also, when Pornhub deleted my video, they didn't delete any of the data surrounding it like the title and the username. That is also a problem.

I contacted Pornhub in January to get them to remove the data and the thumbnails associated with their site. At first they pretended not to know what I was talking about. I sent them all the information again. They sent me a link to Google and told me to go do it myself. After a month and a half and eight emails, Pornhub has removed some of the data and thumbnails that were associated with their site and they indexed a few things on one search engine that's still not all gone. I think they're just ignoring me now.

I also asked them for help in removing the thumbnails and the content that spread from Pornhub to these other sites. They told me that they can't remove their content from the other sites it spreads to. However, they have an entire program where they proactively do exactly that for their exclusive model content. They advertise it. They monitor the Internet for where these videos spread, they take them down for them and they even pay them a bonus. All I'm asking is that they pretend to care as much about their non-consensual content as they do about their paid, exclusive content.

Nothing will ever be able to undo what has been done. At this point, I just want to be off the Internet.

Thanks to Pornhub, today is day 1,292 that I have been naked on these porn sites.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, guest number one.

I will turn to guest number two now for your opening statement.

Thanks so much for joining us.

[Witness 2, As an Individual]

I'm now 19 years old. I was 17 when videos of me on Pornhub came to my knowledge, and I was only 15 in the videos they've been profiting from.

When I was 15, I was extorted by a man who was unknown at the time into sending massive amounts of videos and images of me. He would tell me what I needed to do, for how long and even as far as what positions I had to be in. There were things he even asked me to do that were so disturbing that I cut contact with him, even though I was scared to do that.

I eventually found out that I wasn't the only one this had happened to because I was sent a link to a Tumblr account that was selling Dropbox files of me and hundreds of girls so other people could use our exploitation to make fake accounts to sell to men online who thought they were really speaking to us.

It's not something that anybody wants to hear, but I think it's important you understand the type of stuff I was subjected to that night and how depraved the man behind it was, so you can truly understand what Pornhub's been profiting from. There made me send videos of vaginal and anal masturbation, videos of me removing my clothes, videos of me spitting on myself and more. The videos that made me quit contact was when they went on to ask me to eat my own feces and drink my own urine. Although the videos that I did were embarrassing enough, I feel more sad for the girls who did the rest and got their footage uploaded to Pornhub.

I contacted the police when I found the site, but their only help for me was to delete my social media. From there a girl who I thought was my friend started circulating images of me, even going as far as to upload them on my 17th birthday and tagging me in them. I started getting so much abuse and harassment from people who lived close to me, and then in September 2018, someone from my city posted a video of me to Snapchat, which was screen recorded from Pornhub. This was the first time I had any knowledge of being on their site.

During this time, I stopped eating and leaving the house, and I was even considering suicide. I started getting hundreds of follow requests daily on my social media accounts and at least 50 messages a day sending me links of videos of me on Pornhub. That's when I realized that my name and social media had been posted alongside the videos. Some of those people were respectable and reported them when I told them I was only 15, but the majority of them enjoyed it even more.

It was a really scary time, and it seemed to just get worse and worse. A lot of the men felt entitled to me once they'd seen me on Pornhub. When I didn't want to speak to them, they would try to blackmail me or threaten me even more. Even now, I have some of the same people from 2018 still trying to contact me.

Pornhub would remove my videos once I found them, but I believe that's only because I provided a police reference code and because I mentioned suicide. I think they knew all too well that another death at their hands wouldn't look too good. Every time they took it down, they also allowed more and more videos of me to be reuploaded. The videos would get hundreds of thousands of views and contained my personal information, including my address and my family's social media.

One of the worst days was when their viewers started sending videos to my mum and dad. I barely speak to my dad, so to know he saw that video made it really hard for me to continue to visit him and feel normal.

Videos of me being on Pornhub has affected my life so much to the point that I don't leave my house anymore. I stopped being able to work because I was so scared to be out in public around other people. I feel like everyone who looks at me is looking at those videos. Because I couldn't work, I started my own business so I could stay in my bedroom where I felt safe, but even then, Pornhub's viewers started sending my customers the videos of me and making fake accounts of me.

To see Corey Urman smile and explain that he uses aliases to protect his identity, when he has the choice to post or not to post, is disgusting, because I had no choice about being uploaded to Pornhub and having my personal details exposed to the world. Hearing about Mr. Antoon buying his third property with the money he made from our exploitation but refusing to speak about how much he he earns in a year was more than frustrating, because I wake up every day in the same room where my exploitation took place. I don't have the choice of simply going to another property to escape from that.

My anxiety got so bad to the point where I couldn't eat at all, and I dropped down to only 80 pounds. I still struggle to manage to eat properly to this day, causing me to struggle with not only health issues but body dysmorphia. So many of their viewers commented on my body, discussing whether it was fake or real, messaging me to insult me or to talk how much they loved my small 15-year-old frame.

I had a lot of friendships that had to come to an end because I refused to go out and see them. I didn't want to go to parties or out in public, because being around people makes me have panic attacks. Going to the shops with my mum makes me have panic attacks, even going on public transport does. I even had someone turn up outside my house and take some pictures of my door, telling me that they'd found me on Pornhub and calling me by my name, which isn't on my social media. It's only on Pornhub. It just gave me more reasons not to go outside.

Pornhub always told me that I needed a link to get the videos removed. It was difficult because I couldn't always find the videos that were being sent to me. When I started questioning Pornhub on why they allowed anyone to just upload anything, they just told me that I needed to upload my videos to their third party site. I told them that not only was it illegal for me to do this, but it was illegal for them to ask me to do this because it's child porn and I'm not even allowed to have the content of myself. I told them there was nothing I could do, I felt suicidal and I was even considering getting legal advice if it didn't stop. They ignored me, and I never contacted them again.

They say they tried to tell me there was nothing they could do without a link, but that was a flat-out lie, given the fact that as soon as they were sent cease and desist letters, all footage of me was removed from their site straight away.

Also for them to say they've been forever “evolving” and the takedown of a million videos was just another step forward is debatable, because it's either one of two options. Option one, Pornhub honestly never thought of the idea to make verification needed to upload videos, which to me just clearly shows a lack of common sense and thought capacity to safeguard and run a business of this size. Option two was that they did think about the idea and they chose to ignore it for more money. Given that I asked them why they don't regulate this back in 2019 proves they were already suggested this idea by me, one of their victims, and they chose to just ignore it.

I feel that anyone I come into contact with has either seen the videos or will find them eventually. No one seems to believe I was a child because they tell me Pornhub is 18+ so you can't be underage.

There was a time when I tried to take my own life. Luckily, it wasn't successful. I now have people around me who are really supportive, but not all of Pornhub's victims have been so lucky and not all of Pornhub's victims have had the same support. I don't understand how many women's lives have to end or be ruined before there is accountability for what they've done.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much. I so appreciate your testimony, and I know our committee does as well.

Colleagues, I know that translation was unable to keep up there. We will ensure that the testimony is translated and distributed to members.

Guest two, they're finding that the technical connection with you isn't the best. In responding to questions, if you could just slow your speaking, that would assist the interpreters. Thank you so much.

Mr. Viersen, you will be leading off the rounds of questions.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Chair, I'm afraid I'm sick. This is horrifying testimony that we've been given here. These young women's lives have been destroyed due to the actions of Pornhub—or lack of action by Pornhub.

One of the frustrations on my part is that Pornhub has said that once they learned about this, they took every action to remedy the situation, but in every one of your cases, had this content never ended up on their site in the first place, it sounds as though we'd all be in a much better place.

Vicky, I don't know whether you can talk about whether Pornhub should have worked harder to just prevent the content from showing up in the first place.

[Victoria Galy]

As I stated in many of my videos, it was obvious that it was non-consensual. In one of them, I was asleep on the bed when my ex began touching me and doing things to me. At the end of the video, when I woke up, that was when that particular video stopped.

In a lot of my videos, I was either drugged or highly intoxicated. I couldn't hold my head up. My ex's genital parts were falling out of my mouth throughout the video. It was obvious that these were not consensual.

Some of the videos were taken by hidden cameras, and I could see where maybe Pornhub could make the argument that they didn't know those were non-consensual, because I was alert and awake in those, but had Pornhub reviewed the videos and taken the time to respond to me, even back in 2018, I wouldn't have suffered the trauma that I have over the last two to three years.

Having this disassociative condition as a result of initially finding those videos has damaged relationships that I can never take back. My son is now almost 17, and our relationship over the last two years has been very difficult because of this.

If my videos had never been uploaded to Pornhub, maybe they would have been shared somewhere else, but Pornhub is the leader in porn. That is where everyone goes. It's the first name you think of when you think of adult entertainment or to look at porn; it's Pornhub. Like the other witness testified, once the videos were up there, they were shared on numerous other websites that were connected to Pornhub.

Now they've been shared so many times that they're all over. Like I said, my videos had over eight million views. You cannot imagine the amount of fear that you have when that many people have seen non-consensual videos of you. Leaving the house was very hard for me.

I took a leave of absence from my job. I've been here over 16 years, and I have a perfect record. I worked very hard to build my professional reputation, and to have it all destroyed and for Pornhub to just not care when I contacted them multiple times.... It was not until I filed a civil suit pro se against them and that article came out in The New York Times that suddenly my content disappeared. Even after emailing their legal department.... Like I said, it was Tuesday of this week that they finally got back to me and told me they had finished reviewing it and that they would fingerprint it and remove it permanently from their sites.

That does nothing to take back the damage that's been done and how far the videos have been spread and downloaded.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you for coming and presenting at our committee here today.

One of the issues or things that I have been pushing for is that, for any content going up on the Internet, age and consent must be verified before the video goes up and that there be a way to double-check that. Is that something that you think we should be pushing for here in Canada?

[Victoria Galy]

The problem with my videos is that they were verified. Most of them were claimed to be verified by Laura and Lauri from Helsinki, Finland. I've had flashbacks from the events.

My ex and I took a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, with a group of his friends. When we first landed, the first place we visited was the dispensary, and he purchased various edibles and things. When we went back to the hotel I was given edibles. We were smoking marijuana and I was given a drink.

Now, I don't know what was in the drink. I believe I was drugged, because I didn't have a recollection of it. I spoke to my mom on the phone the next day after arriving there. She asked me how the trip was and I told her I didn't recall the previous day. She was alarmed at that time and thought that Brandon, my ex, had done something, but at that point, you know, we were together and I stood up for him. I thought my mom was just a mom.

Even through the verification process, they uploaded a photo that Brandon told me how to pose for. The photo is clearly edited, even to the extent that the leg is distorted from my hip to my knee. It shows in the image that is used to verify that model that there is a huge distortion, just like with photoshopping in magazines or any other photoshopped photo where you can tell the inaccuracies. If Pornhub had actually reviewed that photo closely, they would have noticed that, but the problem is that they had a photo of me naked to submit with my videos to claim that it was consensual. They uploaded their passports—Laura and Lauri did—to claim these videos, so even with their verifying the models, there's a problem in the way they're verifying them.

If you have a verified model, that still doesn't mean you should ignore victims when they come to you and tell you, “Hey, this is me.” I've sent them, like I said, my birthmark. I've sent them nude photos. I've sent them markings on my body that matched up. I even pointed out that the videos are listed under my name and I say my ex's name in the video. There is audio proof. You know, my voice is on this video.

Like I said, I received no response from them until Tuesday of this week. All of a sudden, even though they won't admit what I have said is true, they've decided to delete the Vicky Lust account and to fingerprint the content.

If they are allowed to continue and to have verified models, there should be a better way of verifying them. I know that a lot of companies that do porn, from what I've researched, are required to have a business licence before they can upload content. Just the average Joe submitting a nude photo that is cut off from here and doesn't have my head on it, along with their passport, should not be enough for them to become a verified model.