Pornhub users including children bombarded with ‘thousands of sex abuse videos’
PORNHUB is among porn sites bombarding users – including children – with thousands of sex abuse videos, a study found. Kids can access the clips free online with no age check – with many showing violence against women and rape acts. A probe found out of 131,738 videos on homepages of Pornhub, XHamster and XVideos, […]
PORNHUB is among porn sites bombarding users – including children – with thousands of sex abuse videos, a study found.
Kids can access the clips free online with no age check – with many showing violence against women and rape acts.
A probe found out of 131,738 videos on homepages of Pornhub, XHamster and XVideos, one in eight showed non-consensual acts.
They included clips where those filmed were described as drugged or “very young”, The Times reports.
The largest study of this kind, published in the British Journal of Criminology, looked at material showing violence that can be easily found.
Separate research has previously found more young people are looking at porn than before, with teens saying they had viewing pornography they found disturbing.
For this study, researchers at Durham University found anyone who visited the homepages were faced with these videos immediately – despite it going against the site’s terms and conditions.
They wrote: “It is not the case that criminal material is relegated to niche sites, hidden from all but a determined viewer, or only available on the dark web.”
Much of them referenced “rape porn”, which is illegal to have or distribute in the UK, instead titled “boyfriend forced gf for sex” or “again and again forced”.
Keywords regularly found included “grope” and “molest”, with thousands of titles referring to violence or coercion.
‘SHOCKING’
The researched took hourly snapshots of content on the homepages in six months from 2017-18.
They used keywords to find titles that matched the World Health Organisation of sexual violence and then disregarded BDSM consensual clips.
Clare McGlynn QC, a professor of law at Durham who co-authored the study, said: “It’s shocking that this is the material that the porn companies themselves are choosing to showcase to first-time users.
“Our findings raise serious questions about the extent of criminal material easily and freely available on mainstream porn websites and the efficacy of current regulatory mechanisms.”
Fiona Vera-Gray, a legal research fellow and co-author of the study, said sexually violent material “eroticised non-consent” and distorted “the boundary between sexual pleasure and sexual violence”.
Pornhub and XVideos state all content “depicting” child sexual abuse, rape, incest and forced sexual acts is banned – with simulations also not allowed.
Pornhub disagreed with the study’s findings, saying all content on its website depicted “consensual kinks”.
A spokesman said: “Consenting adults are entitled to their own sexual preferences, as long as they are legal and consensual, and all kinks that meet these criteria are welcome on Pornhub.”
The company said any suggestion it allowed illegal content was “categorically and factually inaccurate”.
XVideos said: “We prohibit the uploading of illegal content, remove potentially illegal content when it is brought to our attention, and work with law enforcement in appropriate cases.”
Last year we told how a child rape victim says the porn website Pornhub profited from her sexual abuse as a toddler.
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Users viewed one of the videos of her being abused as a toddler more than 600 times, she claims.
The website was then probed by credit card giants Visa and Mastercard following the claims.
In a statement to The Sun, Pornhub denied such claims, saying it was “irresponsible and flagrantly untrue” to suggest it carried such images of child sexual abuse material.