All right.
Over 200,000 people had watched the video of her being assaulted while she lay drugged and unconscious. On that day in August, mortified, dizzied by her discovery of the betrayal, Legarde prepared to tie a noose.
“I was standing in my garage, under a beam, holding onto a rope”, she recalled, but finally, she changed her mind. She said, “I said to myself, 'If this is your situation, he'll do it to someone else tomorrow.'” Legarde resolved her own story and fought back, so now it doesn't have to happen to other girls.
We've heard several stories like this from people who have come to this committee.
Nicholas Kristof points out that this isn't about pornography. This is about rape and sexual abuse. He's also heard from a Canadian student who said, “I have no problem with consensual adults making porn.” Her concern is that many people in the pornographic videos weren't consenting adults, like her. Kristof writes that after she turned 14, a man enticed her to engage in sexual play over Skype. He secretly recorded her. A clip, along with her full name, ended up on XVideos, the world's most-visited pornography site. Google searches helped direct people to this illegal footage of child sexual abuse. This Canadian student shared with Kristof how she begged XVideos to remove the clip. Instead, XVideos hosted two more copies so that hundreds of thousands of people could leer at her at the most mortifying moment in her life.
I also want to highlight another study that came out at the beginning of the month and that may be important to this committee's work. The study, published in The British Journal of Criminology, looked at the ways in which mainstream pornography positions sexual assault violence as normative sexual script. By analyzing videos and titles found in the landing sites of these three most popular pornography sites in the United Kingdom—XVideos, Pornhub and XHamster—the study drew the largest research sample on online pornographic content to date, over 130,000. It is unique in its focus on the content immediately advertised to the new user. The academics found that one in eight titles shown to a first-time user on the main page of the porn sites depicted sexual violence or non-consensual content.
Mr. Chair, we have heard from people from across the spectrum about how they have been targeted and exploited by companies such as Pornhub, and that is what this study is all about.
Kate was 15 years old. Her ex was 20. He was into making homemade videos and stuff, and he videotaped her. One day he said, “Let me show you something.” She tried to get the content taken off Pornhub. It took her years to get rid of that content.
Rosa was 16. She was drunk at a friend's party. She woke up and there were naked pictures of her on Pornhub, with her name and her phone number. She had endless calls and texts. She had to change her number.
Nicole was 14. She made a decision that changed her life. She was having a sexual FaceTime with someone she didn't know. “I didn't know anything about him, his name or his age or anything”, she said, “but I showed him areas of my body that were private. I didn't know it at the time but he was recording it and uploaded it to Pornhub. The name of the video was even 'Young Teen', but that wasn't enough for Pornhub to analyze it and take it down. No, years later, classmates of mine found out about me and the pornography that was shot of me as a child. I've had the police involved on multiple occasions and cannot get the videos taken down.”
This is a video of Rosella, who was raped when she was 14, yet the video is still up on Pornhub.
Kyra, at the age of 15, was coerced into making a film of a sexual act. The video had been uploaded, without her consent, to Pornhub. The uploader was also underage. No one confirmed anyone's age or consent. “I've been dealing with image issues, PTSD, sexual discomfort since the incident and into adulthood. This is my personal account, and I have heard similar stories from other women. I will never forgive Pornhub for allowing my abuse to be shared publicly. It caused me to relive my pain, year over year over year.”