National Center on Sexual Exploitation Calls Remaining Credit Card Companies to Follow
Washington, DC (December 10, 2020) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) commended Visa’s and Mastercard’s decisions to cut ties with Pornhub, following The New York Times investigation which highlighted how Pornhub profits from child sexual abuse material.
“Visa and Mastercard have made the right decision to finally cut ties with a profiteer of rape. These companies are now standing on the side of human dignity and we applaud Visa and Mastercard for making this bold step,” said Dawn Hawkins, senior vice president and executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “We met with both Visa and Mastercard earlier in 2020 to ask them to stop processing payments for Pornhub and we are grateful that both companies will make these significant changes.”
“Pornhub has profited for years from rape, child sexual abuse material, sex trafficking and revenge pornography. It has ignored survivors who have repeatedly reached out to Pornhub to have nonconsensually-shared material – as well as videos of rape – removed. It cannot make any ‘improvements’ to change those facts. Pornhub must be shut down. We hope Visa’s and Mastercard’s decisions lead to other credit card companies like Discover and JCB International to cut ties with Pornhub,” Hawkins said. “No company should agree to prop up this abuse industry.”
NCOSE has also called on the U.S. Department of Justice, Congress and all 50 state attorneys general to investigate and shut down Pornhub. Since February 2020 has been in conversations with major credit card companies demanding they cease processing payments for Pornhub and all porn websites.
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.
