‘Defund Pornhub’: Christian actor Terry Crews declares as 1.5M demand porn site be shut down
Terry Crews, the Christian actor and host of primetime programs including “America’s Got Talent” and “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” has denounced the website Pornhub.
A grassroots effort has been launched to shut down the global pornography website Pornhub amid allegations that its profiting off the trafficking of underage girls who are forced to perform sex acts in videos.
In a short message posted to his Twitter account on Tuesday, Crews stated his opposition to the widely visited porn website, parodying the radical call to “defund the police.”
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“DEFUND PORNHUB,” tweeted Crews, getting as of Thursday morning over 68,000 likes and more than 14,000 retweets and comments.
Crews also tagged the group Fight the New Drug in his tweet. The organization describes itself as a “Non-religious, non-legislative, research-based nonprofit raising awareness on the harmful effects of porn & exploitation.”
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, another anti-pornography group, commended Crews for his open statement of support for the movement to shut down Pornhub.
“It takes courage to publicly state that there are major problems with the largest pornography website’s existence, and we commend Terry Crews for using his influence to call on Pornhub to be defunded,” said NCOSE Executive Director Dawn Hawkins in a statement on Wednesday.
“Pornhub — which requires no legitimate forms of age-verification from users who are uploading content — ultimately is fueling demand for sexual abuse material and putting lives at great risk. It is past time to shut down Pornhub.”
In 2016, Crews posted a video to Facebook acknowledging a past addiction to pornography and explained that it resulted in the end of his marriage to Rebecca King Crews.
“It changes the way you think about people. People become objects,” Crews said in the 2016 video. “It affected everything. I didn't tell my wife ... didn't tell my friends. Nobody knew, but the internet allowed that little secret to just stay and grow. It was something that my wife was literally like, 'I don't know you anymore. I'm out of here.'”
Crews’ tweet comes as an online petition launched by Laila Mickelwait of Exodus Cry that's calling for Pornhub to be shut down has garnered more than 1.5 million signatories.
“Pornhub, the world's largest and most popular porn site, has been repeatedly caught enabling, hosting, and profiting from videos of child rape, sex trafficking, and other forms of non-consensual content exploiting women and minors,” the petition states.
“We're calling for Pornhub to be shut down and its executives held accountable for these crimes.”
The petition cites multiple examples of Pornhub allegedly being connected to sex trafficking, including the posting of videos of an abducted minor being sexually assaulted.
“A 15-year-old girl who had been missing for a year was finally found after her mother was tipped off that her daughter was being featured in videos on the site — 58 such videos of her rape and sexual abuse were discovered on Pornhub,” continued the petition.
“Her trafficker, who was seen in the videos raping the child, was identified using surveillance footage of him at a 7-Eleven where he was spotted with his victim. He is now facing a felony charge.”
Pornhub has insisted that its past offenses were due to previous owners and that under new leadership they have set up accountability standards.
“Pornhub has continuously put in place the industry's most stringent safeguards and policies when it comes to combating unauthorized and illegal content, as part of our commitment to combating child sex abuse material,” said Pornhub in a statement to the BBC in February.
“The company employs Vobile, a state-of-the-art, third-party fingerprinting software that scans any new uploads for potential matches to unauthorized material and makes sure the original video doesn't go back up on the platform.”
