WASHINGTON, DC (April 22, 2021) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), along with a group of 104 survivors and advocates from 13 countries, have sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai requesting that the company “improve its search engine policies to no longer promote access to sexual violence, incest, racist or other abusive pornography.”
The letter is in response to the explosive New York Times story, “Why Do We Let Corporations Profit From Rape Videos?,” that reported that “Google searches helped direct people to this illegal footage of child sexual abuse.”
“The reality is Google helps people find and watch rape videos, sex trafficking, and even child sexual abuse. Google rightly doesn’t produce ‘how-to’ articles in top searches on suicide, yet it allows searches for non-consensual materials to go straight to the source: pornography websites that are infested with illegal and non-consensual content,” said Haley McNamara, vice president at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and director of International Center on Sexual Exploitation, a NCOSE subsidiary.
This letter to Google is an effort by the joint campaign, Dismantle Pornhub, launched by the International Centre on Sexual Exploitation (UK), Collective Shout (Australia), Defend Dignity (Canada), and #Traffickinghub (USA) to call out entities that support the infrastructure of Pornhub and MindGeek.
In recent weeks, multiple lawsuits have been filed against MindGeek, including a joint class action lawsuit filed against MindGeek by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) and other law firms. NCOSE filed a joint class action lawsuit against XVideos on behalf of a child sexual abuse survivor whose images were published and monetized by this online international pornography company.
“For years, pornography websites have operated with impunity, and perpetuated horrible injustices to survivors of sex trafficking, rape, child sexual abuse, and many others by refusing to take down illegal or non-consensually shared material from their sites. Google has had a foundational role in driving traffic to these pornographic websites and it is time for it to end,” McNamara added.
About International Centre on Sexual Exploitation (ICOSE)
Utilizing cutting edge tactics for private and public policy advocacy and building on a decade of coalition-building experience, the International Centre on Sexual Exploitation (ICOSE) works to bolster the global abolitionist movement. ICOSE is a UK-based division of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE). Learn more at: https://endsexualexploitation.org/icose/
About National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
Founded in 1962, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is the leading national non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography.
