Visa has suspended payments for ads on Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek after the credit card giant was accused by a woman of facilitating the dissemination of child pornography on the website.
“We do not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity,” Al Kelly, Visa’s CEO, said in a statement issued Thursday.
The statement comes a week after a federal judge in California denied Visa’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Serena Fleites, who claims the payments processor helped Pornhub and MindGeek profit from illegal content.
“Let me be clear: Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, and child sexual abuse,” Kelly said. “It is illegal, and Visa does not permit the use of our network for illegal activity.”
“Our rules explicitly and unequivocally prohibit the use of our products to pay for content that depicts nonconsensual sexual behavior or child sexual abuse,” the statement concluded.
A spokesperson for MindGeek told The Post earlier this week that Pornhub has banned child pornography as well as any material that depicts sexual abuse of children.
US District Judge Cormac Carney said Visa continued to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite the fact that it may have known the company monetized child pornography.
“It is simple,” Carney said in his ruling on Friday.
“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.”
Visa called the ruling “disappointing,” saying it “mischaracterizes Visa’s role and its policies and practices.”
Fleites filed suit after she discovered that her boyfriend posted a video to Pornhub showing her in a sexually compromised state when she was in eighth grade.
The boyfriend uploaded the video to Pornhub without her knowledge or consent, it was alleged in the lawsuit.
By the time she discovered the video, it had been viewed on Pornhub more than 400,000 times.
Fleites alleges in court papers that it took MindGeek weeks to remove the explicit video after she initially flagged it.
By the time the video was finally taken down, it had been downloaded several times, generating more than 2.7 million views, the lawsuit alleges.
Fleites claimed in court papers that the discovery upended her life. She alleges that she developed an addiction to heroin and that she attempted suicide several times.
“Although Serena is now sober, the long-term effects of Pornhub’s wrongdoing continue to this day,” according to the lawsuit.
“The original Pornhub videos of Serena continue to be disseminated through other platforms, including on MindGeek affiliated sites and other pornography sites. Serena remains estranged from certain family members. Throughout various stages of the past five years she was homeless and lived in her car.”
For all the latest Business News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.
