My ex posted secret sex videos of me on Pornhub to blackmail me – there are hundreds more victims out there, says Brit
A BRIT woman whose ex took secret videos of them having sex has spoken for the first time about discovering the footage on Pornhub.
Jill Martin was just 23 and living in Florida when she met her ex-boyfriend Daniel Carson – the man who would make her life a living hell for years to come.
Jill Martin says she’s still haunted by the footage shared by her ex on porn sites[/caption]
Carson shared intimate footage of the pair across several MindGeek platforms – a Canada-based company which owns PornHub, Redtube, YouPorn and Brazzers.
Jill, 39, bravely contacted the police and in 2018 her ex was sentenced to a year behind bars for extortion and sexual cyber harassment.
But she was left desperately trying to get the videos removed from Pornhub and other MindGeek sites.
Despite various attempts to get the videos removed, Jill claims she has never received a response from the company.
In an emotional interview with The Sun, she said she is still not sure if the content has been completely removed from MindGeek’s multiple sites.
She fears the footage may have been re-uploaded by different users – with no way of tracking the clips.
Speaking about her horror ordeal in a bid to help other victims, brave Jill said: “I wished people would come forward and not be ashamed and not scared, that’s what they [MindGeek] want and I want people to know we are real people.
“If we stay anonymous no one sees your face or your name – you’re not really a person.
“It [MindGeek] damages lives, it’s hurt my life too. I just wished more people would come forward and we can build a community together.”
Talking about the horror discovery, she said: “It was very traumatic, I thought that my husband was going to leave me and it was horrible.
“I honestly thought about killing myself at one point because I was just so ashamed.
“I didn’t want anyone to find these videos, I felt powerless because I didn’t know who to go to.
“This happened when revenge porn was at its start and there weren’t the organisations to go to now that can help people.”
Most people will be familiar with Pornhub – one of the world’s leading porn sites.
But PornHub and its owners have received backlash for years for its inadequate response to taking down non-consensual pornography.
The site is “infested with rape videos” and “monetises child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags”, a New York Times column said in 2020.
Pornhub was launched in Canada in 2007 and was bought in 2010 by MindGeek – and by 2022 it was the 13th most trafficked website in the world.
I honestly thought about killing myself at one point because I was just so ashamed
Jill Martin
The site allows users to view and upload pornographic content – but footage can be flagged if it violates the company’s terms of service.
The terms stipulate that users must be at least 18 years old, anyone featured in videos must be 18 and content must not depict underage sexual activity, non-consensual sexual activity, revenge porn, blackmail, intimidation and violence.
Despite the regulations, Jill is not the only victim who had to witness the worst moments of their lives being shared online for the whole world to see.
In 2019, a 15-year-old missing girl was found alive after her mum was alerted to nearly 60 videos of her being sexually abused on PornHub.
Victim Rose Kalema also shared her own heartbreaking story in 2020, telling how she had been raped at knifepoint when she was just 14-years-old.
Rose said she felt sick when months later the video was uploaded onto Pornhub and was shared by her classmates, the BBC reported.
She said she emailed Pornhub repeatedly for six months and had no response until she impersonated a lawyer.
Her story is similar to so many others – with MindGeek appearing to escape any responsibility and still profit from the sick content.
Pornhub is estimated to make £83billion a year – mostly through ads and its premium subscription service for what it describes as “porn worth watching”.
In 2016, years after Jill split from Carson, she was running a successful business when she had a bizarre email using the same name as her ex-partner.
Knowing the phone number on the email was his, she asked that he leave her alone.
But she was horrified by what she found when she Googled his email address and her name.
It showed at least four videos of them together on porn sites such as Pornhub and Spank Wire.
Jill told The Sun: “My heart sank to my stomach. I had a complete mental breakdown and ended up closing my business.
“I was lucky my now husband, he was my boyfriend at the time, took care of me financially because for a year I couldn’t work. I was a complete mess.
“It was painful, I was really sick, I was in shock, to be honest, and the fact that when I found them they had been up there for nearly a year.”
Despite feeling ashamed, Jill said she knew she had to contact the cops when he began blackmailing her and told her husband and loved ones.
Her ex was arrested and later jailed for 12 months on extortion and sexual cyber harassment charges after accepting a plea deal.
I had a complete mental breakdown and ended up closing my business
Jill Martin
But sadly she was left dealing with the aftermath of Carson’s actions as she struggled to get the content removed.
She says despite every desperate attempt to reach out to MindGeek and its platforms, she has never had a response.
The Sun has seen emails sent to one of MindGeek’s sites asking for the content to be removed and has spoken to authorities involved in the case at the time.
In the lead-up to the trial, Jill said her lawyers subpoenaed Spankwire – but it’s not clear whether the site responded to the order.
Some videos were only taken down four years later in 2020 when Pornhub removed content from unverified users.
But it didn’t mean the clips were gone as users had been able to download and re-upload videos on porn sites around the world.
They may also have been uploaded with different names, captions or tags – which would make them completely untraceable.
Pornhub has been heavily criticised for its response to banned and non-consensual content.
Actress Uldouz Wallace was a victim of an iCloud hacker who stole private images from the devices of 100 women including celebs Jennifer Lawrence and Selena Gomez in 2014.
Uldouz’s ex-boyfriend had taken secret intimate images of her and was using them to blackmail her via text message – months after the images were leaked onto the internet.
But she said she also struggled to get the content removed over a seven-year period despite numerous take-down requests, meaning the videos were constantly being re-uploaded.
Pornhub told The Sun that it had received takedown requests from Uldouz and her lawyers “which led to the expeditious removal of the content” but failed to specify when they had responded.
Talking about the hack, she told The Sun: “Who would have known that I was being stalked by this hacker for two years?
“He was monitoring all of our text messages, talks.
“It all hit me really bad and my stomach just dropped and my heart sank, and my whole body collapsed.
“I isolated myself for years and got my head down and kept working to bury everything.”
She said other actors, agents and influencers would bully her believing she was a pornstar – meaning she lost millions in earnings.
Speaking about why other survivors should come forward, she said: “It’s not your shame to carry, it was never your shame to carry… I’m a big believer in taking your power back.
“When I went public I was silent for all of those years but if I had just spoken out sooner I wouldn’t have let it fester for so long.”
Pornhub has previously removed some non-consensual videos when reported, but due to the excruciating process, the clips are cloned and re-uploaded quicker than they could be taken down.
Pornhub said that out of the 3.8 million videos that were uploaded last year, 157,419 were removed for violating the terms of the site.
It claims 13,321 of those were non-consensual videos that were fingerprinted to stop them from being re-uploaded onto the site again.
But in several cases, the victim flagging the sick content is ignored and gets zero response from moderators.
Content classed as premium is still downloadable for users and until the content is fingerprinted it will still be available to share.
MindGeek has now rebranded in a bid to move away from its shadowy past – instead using the company name Aylo.
Aylo told The Sun that the safety of its online community was the “number one priority” and that it would fully cooperate with law enforcement on any investigations or legal matters.
The company also claimed that its Trust and Safety program had proven to be effective in taking down non-consensual content.
In a statement, Aylo – formerly MindGeek – said: “We take all allegations regarding non-consensual material extremely seriously.
“We have instituted policies that surpass those of any other user-generated platform on the internet to help mitigate the ability of bad actors to use our platform to take advantage of their victims.
“This includes, among other practices, our Content Removal Request Form, which, upon filling it out, empowers any user to automatically and instantaneously disable a piece of content, pending further review.
“Only verified users who have provided a government-issued ID that has been verified by a third party are able to upload content.
“All uploads are then reviewed by more than a dozen technologies and proprietary software, followed by human moderators.”
Regarding Jill Martin, Pornhub told The Sun that “based on the information available at this time” they could not “identify whether any content removal request was made.”
In March, The Sun spoke with a Pornhub moderator who said he was expected to look at 800 to 1,000 videos in an eight-hour shift to guess girls’ ages.
He said: “We were scrubbing through the videos as fast as we could.
“Even if we thought we were being diligent we missed videos every now and then.”
It’s not your shame to carry, it was never your shame to carry… I’m a big believer in taking your power back
Uldouz Wallace
Following the New York Times piece, payment processors Mastercard and Visa cut ties with Pornhub and CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo resigned from MindGeek.
The company was recently bought by private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners – a company with an advisory board completely made up of women.
Jill said: “I feel disgusted that these women would support such a company, I know that one of the women is now on OnlyFans.
“So many women and children have been abused and there are so many people that don’t believe that this company has illegal content.
“They think were fake and were trying to get some money out of them.”
Lawyers Brown Rudnick currently have an ongoing lawsuit with MindGeek and its various affiliates on behalf of 30 victims of child pornography, rape, and human trafficking.
Filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, the complaint alleges that Pornhub and MindGeek knowingly profited from videos depicting rape, child sexual exploitation, revenge porn, trafficking, and other non-consensual sexual content.
A lawyer for Brown Rudnick Lauren Tabaksblat said: “With the filing of this suit, we want to put an end to these shameless attacks, give voice to these and other countless victims, and force MindGeek to adopt practices that ensure only consensual content is on its platform.”
Victims of cybersexual abuse can also get help at NCOSE and Protect America’s Daughters.
How you can get help
Women’s Aid has this advice for victims and their families:
- Always keep your phone nearby.
- Get in touch with charities for help, including the Women’s Aid live chat helpline and services such as SupportLine.
- If you are in danger, call 999.
- Familiarise yourself with the Silent Solution, reporting abuse without speaking down the phone, instead dialing “55”.
- Always keep some money on you, including change for a pay phone or bus fare.
- If you suspect your partner is about to attack you, try to go to a lower-risk area of the house – for example, where there is a way out and access to a telephone.
- Avoid the kitchen and garage, where there are likely to be knives or other weapons. Avoid rooms where you might become trapped, such as the bathroom, or where you might be shut into a cupboard or other small space.
If you are a victim of domestic abuse, SupportLine is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm on 01708 765200. The charity’s email support service is open weekdays and weekends during the crisis – messageinfo@supportline.org.uk.
Women’s Aid provides a live chat service – available weekdays from 8am-6pm and weekends 10am-6pm.
You can also call the freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.
A recent Netflix documentary Money Shot exposed the dark truth behind the adult site[/caption]
MindGeek, the site that owns Pornhub, has recently rebranded as Aylo in a bid to clean up its image[/caption]
