A judge ruled on Friday that payment processor Visa Inc. is complicit in monetizing child porn.
The judge, California U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, detailed as much as he denied parts of Visa’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the company.
The plaintiff in the case is a woman who alleges that Visa and Pornhub distributed a video featuring her, titled “13-Year Old Brunette Shows Off For the Camera,” without her consent.
On Friday, a US District Judge found Visa complicit in the monetization of child porn on Pornhub. pic.twitter.com/or1u6YKcAF
— Michael Austin (@mikeswriting) August 2, 2022
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Even more damning of Visa —
“…the Court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn from the very fact that Visa continued to provide MindGeek the means to do so and knew MindGeek was indeed doing so.” pic.twitter.com/63MPUFae7p
— Michael Austin (@mikeswriting) August 2, 2022
“It is simple: Visa made the decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant, despite its alleged knowledge that MindGeek monetized child porn, MindGeek made the decision to continue monetizing child porn, and there are enough facts pled to suggest that the latter decision depended on the former,” Carney wrote in the ruling.
Do you believe that Visa is guilty of monetizing child porn?
“At this early stage of the proceedings, before Plaintiff has had any discovery from which to derive Visa’s state of mind, the Court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn from the very fact that Visa continued to provide MindGeek the means to do so and knew MindGeek was indeed doing so.”
Serena Fleites, the plaintiff, filed the case alongside “three dozen other anonymous victims of sex trafficking,” according to Bloomberg.
When Fleites first found the video, it had amassed 400,000 views on Pornhub. She proceeded to warn MindGeek, the porn site’s parent company, to no avail.
Eventually, one version of the video racked up an additional 2.7 million views, Bloomberg reported.
Following the company’s failure to remove the content, Fleites’s life “spiraled out of control” as she “became addicted to heroin and attempted suicide several times.”
MindGeek first began facing harsh backlash and intense scrutiny back in Dec. 2020 following the release of a bombshell report titled “The Children of Pornhub.”
Authored by former New York Times human and women’s rights columnist Nicholas Kristof, the report alleged that Pornhub “monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering” and other forms of illegal content.
Detailed in the story are several interviews Kristof conducted with underage girls who say their rapes were filmed and uploaded to the MindGeek-owned site.
At the time, Visa began distancing itself from the company.
“We are aware of the allegations, and we are actively engaging with the relevant financial institutions to investigate, in addition to engaging directly with the site’s parent company, MindGeek,” Visa said in a statement at the time.
“We are instructing the financial institutions who serve [Pornhub parent company] MindGeek to suspend processing of payments through the Visa network.”
Despite this, the financial services company was still found to be complicit by Judge Carney on Friday.
