Allegations of trafficking are included in the lawsuit
Crystal Palace football star Leigh Nicol is one of four British women suing Pornhub over content violations. A video of Nicol having sex was posted to the site after hackers accessed her iCloud account.
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Due to the stress and anxiety caused by the incident, Nicol had not played professional sport in over a year. Numerous emails later, the video was eventually removed, but the women said they only received automated and generic responses from Pornhub.
The lawsuit, which is 179 pages, was filed in California on Thursday. Of the thirty-four women, fourteen were underage when the videos were uploaded, and a further fourteen were victims of assault.
Each woman is not named but instead referred to by Jane Doe and then a number. Nicol is Jane Doe 28, and it is reported that she still suffers “significant emotional harm, including anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and panic attacks” over her ordeal.
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Jane Doe 2 was allegedly blackmailed by now-convicted child sex offender 26-year-old Abdul Hasib Elahi. He supplied “box sets” of abuse to over 2,000 people worldwide and admitted to 157 cases in Birmingham Crown Court earlier this month.
Numerous videos were saved and reshared of Jane Doe 2, and two years on, there are still five separate links on the site. The report reads as follows:
‘Jane Doe No. 2 suffered from suicidal thoughts and has attempted suicide on more than one occasion.
‘Jane Doe No. 2’s anxiety is so severe that she rarely leaves her home because she fears that someone will recognize her from one of the Pornhub videos or photographs.
‘This anxiety caused her to quit her job and resort to online work that does not necessitate going out in public.’
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All of the women involved have similar heartbreaking stories. Nicol told Sky News of the ordeal.
‘There’s shame, there’s embarrassment, there’s disgust, sickness, there’s doubts that I’m not good enough.
‘I feel like no one would ever potentially want to actually be my future husband, because I’ve got these videos attached to me.’
The lawsuit accuses Mindgeek, the parent company of Pornhub, not just of perpetuating the narrative but also contributing to it. They are accusing the company of operating in human trafficking, racketeering, child pornography, copyright piracy, internet hacking, stalking, blackmail and extortion, and money laundering.
In a statement to DailyMail.com, Pornhub said “it takes abuse of the platform seriously and is reviewing the complaint, but allegations that Pornhub is a criminal enterprise that traffics women are utterly absurd, completely reckless and categorically false.”
