By Donny Ndoka –
She’s the scourge of PornHub, a 43-year-old mother of two who got the world’s largest adult website to take down 90% of its content. She’s a Christian woman born to a Middle Eastern doctor who fought for human rights.
“PornHub is a crime scene,” Laila Mickelwait told Patrick Bet-David on the PBD Podcast. It displayed underage sex, rape and violence. Prior to her campaign, anyone could upload porn with no vetting. Viewers could download the content and re-upload it, to the horror of the abused who begged to have videos documenting their victimization removed, she says.
Laila’s years-long drive to hold PornHub executives accountable started with a petition to shut the website down and has now culminated in 25 lawsuits representing 300 victims.
“I think we will see full criminal prosecution of the executives of PornHub,” she told Bet-David. The effort is “not trying to shut down the entire porn industry. It’s to shut down the corporate trafficker Pornhub because they have globally distributed and profited from the trauma of countless victims.”
Laila Mickelwait took up the plight of the exploited in February of 2020 after hitting a low point in her life. Her three-month-old screamed through the night from shoulder dystocia from a difficult birth. She had been fighting sex trafficking for a decade and was frustrated with the lack of progress.
She read of 14-year-old Sarena Fleites, a straight-A student who was convinced by an older boy she wanted to impress to send him naked content. It got posted and reposted endlessly on PornHub. Sarena, whose requests to remove her content were denied and delayed, got addicted to drugs and became homeless, living in a car.
Laila decided to retaliate against PornHub on behalf of victims like Sarena.
Eventually, Sarena got help and is “suing the hell out of PornHub,” Laila says. Suicide ideation hits 50% for non-consensual image-based sexual abuse, she notes.
Laila launched an online petition to close Pornhub. It got 2.33 million signatures; even porn stars signed the petition because of the exploitation of minors. She exposed PornHub’s evils to politicians, advertisers, the FBI and even the prime minister of Canada where the website is based, she says
As of 2020, PornHub was the 5th most visited website in the world, with 170 million visits a day and enough content (56 million individual uploads) that if watched straight would take 169 years to watch.
As this female version of David fought her Goliath, she got doxxed, harassed and threatened.
“I had prostitution escort ads made in my name, my face superimposed onto pornographic images being circulated online,” Laila writes on her website. “There were death threats, rape threats and smears. My mother’s home address was posted online, suggesting it was a brothel that could be rented by the hour; my sister’s bank accounts were hacked and drained of money.”
She remained undaunted.
Breakthrough came when the New York Times launched an investigation. They found that even a 3-year-old was sexually abused on the site. A slew of media went on the attack. Then, the New Yorker wrote an 8,000-word story, Laila says. That was the final straw.
The nonstop bad press finally convinced the credit card companies, PayPal and other advertisers to dump PornHub. They were forced to screen and remove criminal content. Without an easy way to monetize the website, PornHub’s business model was hobbled.
Today, the number of individual uploads has been reduced to 5.2 million, Laila says.
PornHub has gone through a series of reorganizations to project the image they’re cleaning up their act, Laila says. But, except for a few execs, the same team remains in power.
Ultimately, the 25 or so lawsuits may be the downfall of PornHub.
“The truth is what is going to set people free,” she says. “It’s what’s going to bring justice.”
To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here
Related content: Mattel refers kids to porn site, from porn star to pastor, a child victim forgives, how easy it is for girls to fall into sex work.
About this writer: Donny Ndoka studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy near Playa Vista Los Angeles.
