Panic attacks, nightmares, stress: the fight of a Canadian assaulted and filmed without her knowledge by her husband

For several years, a 38-year-old Canadian woman did not know that her husband had sexually assaulted her and filmed her while she was unconscious.

Without his consent, she says she ended up on Pornhub, one of the most popular porn sites on the planet.

This video has since been removed from the site, but it is still chasing it.

It has spread over the internet.

And soon a year after this discovery, removing the traces of this recording one by one is a long struggle.

One evening in August 2020, she found on a hard drive a folder of photos that led her to her husband's Pornhub account, from which she was recently separated.

It was there that she first discovered these images that he had published three years earlier, where she is assaulted while she seems to be sleeping.

"Watching the video that night made me sick and that feeling never went away," she said on condition of anonymity.

She has no recollection of this assault.

To read also "I feel like I have been raped": victims of revenge porn, they testify

"The reason I didn't know there was a video was because I was unconscious during the entire video," said this social work student, who lives in Alberta, a province in the west of the country. .

The title and the key words accompanying the recording of about four minutes, with the words "sleeping pills", suggested that she was drugged.

"I just stopped counting the views, it kept spinning"

The video then recorded more than 40,000 views on Pornhub, which claims 130 million visitors per day. It then "spread to other sites, totaling about 200,000 views" according to the young woman. “After that, I just stopped counting, because it was going on all the time,” adds the young woman. Her video generated at least ten pages of results on Google, she recalls. The next morning, she confided in the police, who launched an investigation. A few days later, the video "disappeared on its own" from Pornhub, and the associated keywords no longer produced any results.

According to the young woman, the video was also published in 2017 on subsidiaries of MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub, before being withdrawn last year. The term "sleeping pills" is "not allowed," a spokesperson for Montreal-based MindGeek told AFP. Pornhub found itself in turmoil after the publication of a New York Times article accusing it of hosting child pornography and rape videos, which it denied. In the process, the pornography giant announced new measures to be "at the forefront in the fight and eradication of illegal content".

Only "verified" users can post content and video downloading is now restricted to paid users.

In addition, Pornhub uses artificial intelligence technologies that help its moderators to detect illegal content, including concerning the exploitation of children.

But neither the age nor the consent of the people filmed is verified, says Rachel.

Asked by AFP on this point, MindGeek did not respond.

"The video is saved to hard drives and can keep coming back"

These measures would have "hardly changed" to her situation, deplores the young woman: it is possible to recover a video without downloading it, for example by recording it from the computer screen. “Since people may have been able to upload the video to Pornhub, that means it's now being saved to hard drives and can keep coming back. And that's the case ". “Once it's there, it's there forever. "

The young woman, who admits that the "emotional side is the most difficult" to manage, has since suffered from an anxiety disorder. She says she is often woken up by panic attacks or nightmares. "It's a kind of permanent stress", which causes nausea, digestive problems. “You are all alone,” she said. “There is no one to call, no one who can help you. You can look who owns these anonymous little porn sites and get the admin address, but nothing changes. As if there was nothing you could do. "

In May, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner announced that he was investigating Pornhub over videos that were allegedly released without the consent of those filmed. Ottawa plans to introduce a bill "as soon as possible" to force online platforms to remove illegal content. "We are working to ensure that platforms have a proactive duty to monitor and quickly remove illegal content, before it causes further harm," the cabinet of the Department of Canadian Heritage told AFP.

The young woman, who spends a few days each month trying to have the registration withdrawn, says that it is currently generating several hundred results, against 1,900 in January. “I always want to take more away, I'm not giving up yet. According to her, her ex-husband was arrested in June and will be prosecuted for sexual assault and distributing intimate images without consent.