More than two million people have signed a petition to shut down Pornhub due to sex trafficking and child rape. Photo / 123RF
WARNING: Contains details of child sex abuse
"Pornhub actively profited from my rape," says a tweet written by 19-year-old child sex abuse survivor-turned-activist *Avri Sapir.
It's part of a horrifying thread posted in March this year in which she explains a portion of her traumatic personal story.
"I was abused & used in child porn from when I was a baby until I was 15," Avri writes, "A few weeks ago, videos of me when I was a toddler … being raped were uploaded to Pornhub. The videos were left up for hours, days. One got over 600 views. They were monetised with ads.
"The more views they got, the more ads were put around and in front of the videos. I flagged the videos as 'underage' and filled out the 'content removal request form', but nothing happened. I watched the view count tick up faster and faster," she continues.
These are the tweets that compel me to message Avri, who is based in the US, and ask if we can talk.
Over Zoom, I ask what life – and the future – looks like for Avri today. She refers to a recent suicide attempt, one of many over the years, and says: "I did not think I would still be alive at this point, so I didn't really plan ahead this far."
Frankly, it's not surprising. Victims of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) are known to suffer lifelong consequences including, but not limited to: depression, anxiety, feelings of shame, suicidal thoughts, problems with self-esteem and trouble maintaining intimate relationships.
Although Avri has managed to graduate from high school this year after missing years of school, she still spends hours each day trying to track down and remove images of her abuse from numerous online sites.
"I basically stay in the library until it closes and then go home and continue looking for my content until I fall asleep," she says. "That is something I have to build into my schedule every day."
Associate Professor Michael Salter, from the University of New South Wales, is an internationally known expert in child exploitation. He has been assisting Avri to access appropriate support in North America.
"There are actually a lot of Avris out there – girls and women trying to get their material offline, trying to police their own material. This makes sense because the platforms are not required to proactively search for CSAM (Child Sex Abuse Material), and only have to remove if they are notified," explains Dr Salter.
"I know victims here in Australia in a similar boat. One was told by her abusers that her material was online, and if she could find it, then she could get it taken down. So, she went looking for abuse material. Which instantly discredits and compromises her, because she's gone searching for illegal content."
One of the reasons there are ever more victims like Avri out there is because the Covid-19 pandemic has seen an exponential rise in CSAM production and usage around the globe.
The latest statistics from the Australian Federal Police show that from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) received 21,688 fresh reports of child exploitation.
This compares to 14,165 reports received from the previous financial year. In this same period, CSAM charges are up 226 per cent, from 372 last financial year to 1214 in this financial year.
Detective Superintendent Paula Hudson heads up the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation in Brisbane – an agency led by the Australian Federal Police but comprised of all state and federal policing agencies.
According to Detective Superintendent Hudson, victims are getting younger and the CSAM is becoming more violent.
Pointing to recent cases the ACCCE has been working on, she says: "The children are two, three, four years of age. And the cases are more radical, involving animals as well. It's like a competition to make it more violent and as extreme as they [perpetrators] can."
Supt Hudson says that while the increase in reporting was partly related to growing public awareness, the global demand for CSAM was rapidly rising. "I don't want to detract from the fact that the appetite is still extremely high, particularly in this last period," she says.
As news.com.au reported in August, the Covid-19 pandemic has seen many people isolate and work from home, and therefore using our home computers more. Without bosses breathing down our necks, dark impulses, or even just curiosity, can play out in terrible ways.
Not only has the pandemic created more opportunity for perpetrators, but Supt Hudson says for victims, Covid has "created a perfect storm" and heightened what police call "the threat environment".
"The market research that we recently conducted shows that only 52 per cent of parents know what their kids are doing online or what apps they use," she says, "People are not supervising [their kids] enough.
"We have actually detected child exploitation networks dedicated to the Covid pandemic." Predators were on the clear and dark web openly "discussing what they're doing during the pandemic, discussing the opportunity that it's giving them to create new material, and then how they can access relatives' children that they have at hand," Supt Hudson adds.
The dark web, often used for illegal activities, is only accessible using a special type of custom software. The clear web is the one most of us are familiar with. And surprisingly, this is where much CSAM is gathered and exchanged – on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat and Twitter.
When social media platforms self-detect CSAM or the public reports it to them, those reports are passed on to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US. Australian referrals are sent to the ACCCE.
Det Supt Hudson says they get referrals from all the social platforms listed above (and more). Shockingly, 40-60 per cent of NCMEC reports are from the platforms owned by Facebook, including FB Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
In Avri's case Pornhub did eventually take the videos down – but not before it caused her significant distress. Despite Pornhub's supposed fingerprinting technique – which is meant to prevent problematic content being re-posted – some of Avri's videos later reappeared on the site.
Avri believes Pornhub's flagging system is "basically just for show" and take-down requests "aren't taken seriously".
Pornhub did not respond to news.com.au's detailed questions about Avri's case or how the platform moderates content and verifies the age and consent of users in their videos.
Meanwhile, more than two million people have signed a petition to shut down Pornhub due to sex trafficking and child rape.
In order to catch perpetrators, Supt Hudson explains that police use a suite of laws and methodologies, many of which can't be disclosed here (in order not to assist those criminals exploiting kids).
However, Supt Hudson says a key device used to rescue victims is forensic victim identification: "All our victim ID investigators are Interpol trained and they absolutely go through every single image and video, literally pixel by pixel, looking for clues that will assist in identifying the victims.
"And they look for even things like school logos, clothing, it could be the pattern on the carpet. It's absolutely an amazing job that they do to track and trace and locate both victims and offenders. And they do this internationally," she says.
Although the internet has made CSAM production and sharing far easier, this isn't a new crime.
Australian woman *Bianca, who is in her 40s, will never forget the violent sexual abuse and torture she was subjected to over four-days during a summer camp she attended as an 11-year old. She calls the man who did this to her *Martin.
Thinking back to the extreme physical and mental abuse, Bianca says: "I think I felt like I was going to die on quite a few occasions. I guess there was always a part of me that was really determined to survive. And I think that's what's helped me be a relatively functional human today.
"I don't pretend to be completely functional. I've spent a lot of years in my teenage years, self-harming and I've been hospitalised with eating disorders and all kinds of things like that, just to cope."
Bianca, who still carries injuries from that abuse, believes perpetrators like Martin seek out certain types of children – including a lonely kid like her childhood self who was seeking love and approval.
"I think that they're very finely attuned to vulnerability in their victims and they know how to choose somebody. And I guess I've spent my whole life feeling like I have this 'pick me' across my forehead."
These days, Bianca is a parole officer – and she's sure her childhood abuse is the reason.
"I've spent my life, my career wanting to understand complicated people like Martin. I just want to understand."
Just like Avri, Bianca never stops wondering if her images are out there somewhere, circulating.
"Every time I see somebody who's been convicted of child exploitation type offences in my job, who I know has been exposed to child exploitation material, online or through other analogue means, I look at them and I think, 'Have you seen [the pictures of] me?" says Bianca.
"It feels like I can't ever fully put it away because … I know that there are groups of men, that are very organised, who swap images. Maybe I'm not out there anymore. But I might be, and I have no way of knowing that."
Towards the end of our interview, she expresses a sentiment almost identical to one Avri has also voiced to me.
"The experience of being the subject of images that then go on to be used to pleasure men everywhere, there's this dirtiness and this feeling of never being able to fully escape. And it's a very lonely experience," she says.
The person responsible for Avri's abuse was her father. He'd separated from her mother and Avri lived with him, mainly due to her mum's significant mental ill health. As a toddler, her dad firstly used her in CSAM videos and images, and then, from age eight, pimped her out in person to men for large sums of money. The abuse got increasingly violent.
"I thought it was normal. I didn't know there was anything wrong with it. It had been happening my whole life and I thought that it happened to everyone," she tells me.
These days Avri lives back with her mother, whose mental health has significantly improved.
"I started high school when I was 16," Avri tells me, "The story we gave [the school] is that I had been homeschooled my whole life."
At school Avri started an Instagram account to fit in with her friends – mostly featuring photographs of nature. Occasionally she'd post a selfie, although she doesn't like having her picture taken "for obvious reasons".
"I got contacted by some paedophiles who recognised me. And that was when I realised that it wasn't over and that it was never going to be over," she says.
"I still have nightmares and flashbacks and there are so many ways that it still impacts my life today … but I'm safe now and the physical sexual abuse is no longer happening.
"That's not the case with the videos and the images. They immortalise the abuse. They make it so that it's never-ending. That trauma is still going on because people are going to be watching it, and sharing it and downloading it every second of every day of my life."
Ideally, Avri wants legal controls over the platforms so they are forced to keep children like her safe.
CSAM expert Dr Mike Salter agrees: "Ideally, we want an agency in every country who provides case management – uses proactive detection like the Canadian Centre for Child Protection's Project Arachnid which actively crawls the web to find CSAM, then works to get the material down, communicates with platforms, supports the survivor to get mental health care and redress. They take the burden off the survivor."
* Names changed
• If you've ever experienced sexual assault or abuse and need to talk to someone call the confidential crisis helpline Safe to Talk on: 0800 044 334 or text 4334. (available 24/7)
• Better Blokes which provides peer support throughout Auckland, including a specific Pacific group.
• Male Survivors Aotearoa offers a range of confidential support at centres across New Zealand - find your closest one here.
• Mosaic - Tiaki Tangata: 0800 94 22 94 (available 11am - 8pm)
• If you have been abused, remember it's not your fault.
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