What I saw on Pornhub was so shocking that I went to war with them – but then I faced death threats and organized crime gangs

MOTHER Laila Micklewait’s life was changed forever when she read the story of a missing teen whose experiences of abuse had been shared on Pornhub.

The 15-year-old Florida girl was finally rescued from her tormentor after a year of hell.

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But not before images of her repeated abuse were uploaded to the sex site, where a user recognised her.

Christopher Johnson, then 30, was charged with indecent and lascivious abuse after she was found in his apartment, but Pornhub was not prosecuted.

Laila, 41, who had two young children of her own, was sickened by the 2019 case. She was even more shocked to discover that Pornhub was filled with illegal clips depicting rape, sexual abuse and child molestation, uploaded by anonymous users without questions being asked.

And so began one woman’s crusade to bring down the billion-dollar empire.

Although she was already an activist against human trafficking, Laila had no idea how many abuse videos were on Pornhub.

Her determined campaign to have them removed led to a boycott of the site by major credit card companies, leaving bosses with no choice but to remove the questionable clips or risk losing online payments.

But she refuses to rest until the platform collapses completely.

The campaign made Laila and her family the target of organized criminals who wanted to force her to drop out.

But despite the fear tactics used against her, Laila bravely told The Sun: “I won’t stop until they stop.”

‘Sinister death threats’

The determined American mother’s fight began four years ago, inspired by her father Wisam, who challenged racists who targeted his family because of their Arab heritage.

Father and daughter watched a documentary about human trafficking together when Wisam was a teenager. When Wisam died in 2014, she vowed to continue fighting injustice.

Laila, who grew up in Southern California and is married to Joel, had two young children — Jed, who was just 3 months old, and Lily Rose, three — when she first came across the prolific sex site.

The fact that her sister had been abused strengthened her determination to stand up for vulnerable victims.

Laila decided to test Pornhub’s upload feature and discovered that there were no checks in place to ensure that no abuse or minors were depicted in the footage.

There was no verification of age, no verification of consent

Laila

She revealed: “I discovered that anyone could upload homemade sex videos to the site anonymously, in less than ten minutes, with just an email address.

“There was no verification of age, no verification of consent.”

Since the site’s launch in 2007, users have been able to share their own “amateur” content, which is then reviewed and verified by moderators.

But Laila, the founder and CEO of the Traffickinghub movement, was told that only 30 people per service would watch thousands of videos.

Court documents show there was a backlog of 706,425 videos in 2020.

At one point, the site had a download button, allowing users to make a copy and keep the video they wanted.

This left those appearing in explicit images with no idea who had saved their image.

When Laila launched her attempt to shut down the X-rated site in February 2020, she wrote online: “Pornhub is a trafficker’s dream.

Laila launched her attempt to shut down the X-rated site in February 2020, writing online: “Pornhub is a human trafficker’s dream come true. The site just let me upload content in eight clicks, all it took was an email address. NO ID, NO ‘CONSENT’ form — nothing. Stop saying ‘all women on Pornhub are consenting adults’. IT’S A LIE . . .”

After that tweet, her campaign to hold the sex site accountable grew.

Laila even started a petition to shut down Pornhub, which now has over 2.3 million signatures.

By December 2020, 80 percent of the site’s videos had been removed.

However, she claims the fight put her in the firing line of Pornhub owner MindGeek.

Laila told how her home address was shared online – a malicious practice known as doxing – and she was given chilling warnings that she and her family would be raped.

In between the daily messages, she also encountered sinister death threats.

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At one point, officers even investigated a false accusation that Laila had distributed child pornography, but they found no evidence to support this.

In her book Takedown: Inside The Fight To Shut Down Pornhub And Expose The Dark Side Of A Tech Giant, Laila wrote: “Prostitution escort ads were created in my name, my face was placed on pornographic images circulating online, and threats were made.

“MindGeek has hired ‘journalists’ to write scathing pieces against me and the cause, forwarding them to news organizations that want to report on my work, in an effort to smear and discredit the growing movement.”

Possibly as part of the campaign, her sister’s intimate photos were stolen from her hacked iCloud and her mother’s address was shared online, with a note saying it was a brothel.

Researchers who helped Laila were convinced that MindGeek did this to silence her.

Laila said, “I am a mother and have two young children, and they did not sign up for this.

“It was really a struggle to make the decision not to quit.

“I’m not going to be silent because I’m afraid or because there’s intimidation and threats. I just said, ‘There’s no choice. Justice is too important.’ If it was one victim, it would be worth it, but in this case, it was thousands.”

Although the threats never led to violence, Laila claims a family member’s bank accounts were hacked and money was withdrawn.

What I experienced was nothing compared to the victims around the world whose lives were destroyed by this site.

Laila

And victims claimed they were physically attacked for sharing their stories.

“What I experienced was nothing compared to the victims all over the world whose lives were destroyed by this place,” she said.

“I found the strength to keep thinking about the people whose abuse was immortalized online.

“They will never take that video off the internet, nor forget what happened. I could press pause on the abuse and walk away. I wanted to keep going for their sake, to stop it from happening.”

Laila was an established activist working for Exodus Cry, a non-profit organization focused on ending commercial sexual exploitation, when she started the campaign against Pornhub.

‘Decision to continue’

While researching the site and thinking about ways to get the site to admit that it contained violent content, Laila came across hundreds of disgusting videos of women and children being abused.

Despite her disgust, she forced herself to keep watching so she could help the victims of abuse.

She said: “One of the things that helped me to stay grounded and have this determination to keep going was to compare the fact that I am a witness to these crimes. The way that I was able to cope with this journey was the idea that these crimes needed a witness to be able to say, ‘This happened, it’s wrong’. Every abuser has to pay for what happened.”

Victims, including some from the United Kingdom, were given the contact details of a lawyer who filed a $500 million lawsuit on their behalf.

But in a shocking twist, it was former Pornhub owner Fabian Thylmann – nicknamed the “Zuckerberg of porn” – who gave Laila a tip that would lead to huge success.

Fabian had sold the site, but reached out to Laila via social media asking for her help in taking it offline.

She said: “When he came forward and claimed he wanted to help, I was very suspicious.

“But he confirmed that tackling the credit card companies would work.”

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With help, Laila was able to pressure companies like Visa, Mastercard, and Delta to pull their services from Pornhub because of the illegal content. It was a huge victory.

In 2022, Pornhub CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo resigned.

The site denied that their firing was related to the investigation into Laila and pledged to have a “zero tolerance policy” for child abuse material on their platform.

But the knowledge that Pornhub was still active tormented Laila.

She said she was devastated to discover that credit card companies were still backing the site’s advertising department, just weeks after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a story in December 2020 claiming that Pornhub was “inundated with rape videos,” adding, “The company makes money off child rape.”

She said, “I found out that the credit card companies were going to process Pornhub’s ads again.

“For me, that was the most shocking and disheartening moment.”

Some of the victims Nicholas spoke to were so traumatized by their videos being posted on the sex site that they attempted to end their lives.

Unfortunately, Laila claims that Pornhub still contains abusive content.

She said: “They have taken steps, under extreme duress, to try to stop it. But it is not enough to remove illegal content from the site.”

Pornhub was asked for comment.

• Takedown: Inside The Fight To Shut Down Pornhub For Child Abuse, Rape And Sex Trafficking (Penguin Random House) releases tomorrow.

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