Judge suspects Visa helped websites profit from child porn
WASHINGTON (TND) — A federal judge says “it’s reasonable to conclude” Visa knowingly facilitated the monetization of pornography involving children on Pornhub and other sites controlled by the company MindGeek.
The ruling comes after a lawsuit filed last year, Fleites v. MindGeek, alleged Mindgeek was making money from videos on its websites that depicted "rape, child sexual exploitation, revenge porn, trafficking, and other nonconsensual sexual content."
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California denied Visa's motion to be dropped from the lawsuit, saying there was enough evidence to show the credit card company “knowingly provid[ed] the tool used to complete the crime” of sex trafficking.
In this case, Visa was ruled to have aided sites like Pornhub in monetizing "child porn" by processing payments.
Visa knew that MindGeek’s websites were teeming with monetized child porn," Judge Carney wrote in his decision, adding that there was a “criminal agreement to financially benefit from child porn that can be inferred from [Visa’s] decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite allegedly knowing that MindGeek monetized a substantial amount of child porn."
The court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn... knowingly provid[ing] the tool used to complete the crime," Carney continued.
The ruling is connected to the aforementioned lawsuit in which a woman claimed Pornhub failed to act after she notified the company that it was hosting a pornographic video of her taken by her ex-boyfriend when she was just 13.
The woman reportedly provided photographic evidence that she was the child in the uploaded video titled "13-Year Old Brunette Shows Off For the Camera."
Pornhub eventually took the video down, but that same video was still being hosted on other MindGeek websites, where it attained millions of views. The woman alleges in her lawsuit that those views earned the company advertising dollars facilitated by Visa and, as of 2020, the video still remained on the company's websites.
The unwanted infamy drove the woman into a deep depression, where she became a heroin addict, the lawsuit claims. She also reportedly became suicidal and decided to make pornography for money so she could fuel her addiction.
Here is Visa, standing at and controlling the valve, insisting that it cannot be blamed for the water spill because someone else is wielding the hose,” Carney wrote in his decision.
When MindGeek decides to monetize child porn, and Visa decides to continue to allow its payment network to be used for that goal despite knowledge of MindGeek’s monetization of child porn, it is entirely foreseeable that victims of child porn like Plaintiff will suffer the harms that Plaintiff alleges," Carney also said, referring to the woman who filed the lawsuit.
The lead attorney for the plaintiff, Michael Bowe, spoke to The New York Post about the verdict
The Court’s holding that our detailed complaint adequately pleads Visa was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to monetize child porn means Visa and other credit card companies are finally going to face the civil and perhaps criminal consequences of this unconscionable and illegal activity," Bowe reportedly said on Saturday.
A spokesperson for Visa called the ruling "disappointing" and insisted Visa remains an "improper defendant" in the case.
Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, and child sexual abuse materials as repugnant to our values and purpose as a company," the spokesperson told The National Desk in a released statement. "This pre-trial ruling is disappointing and mischaracterizes Visa's role and its policies and practices. Visa will not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity. We continue to believe that Visa is an improper defendant in this case.
MindGeek's websites, such as Pornhub, RedTube, Brazzers, and YouPorn, claim to collectively have 115 million daily users and 3 billion daily advertisement impressions, according to the New York Post.
Neither Pornhub nor Mindgeek have responded to The National Desk's inquiry for comment on the lawsuit. If a comment is obtained by either party, it will be added to this article.
