Ontario Mandates School Boards to Address Sex Trafficking

Ontario Mandates School Boards to Address Sex Trafficking

After years of advocacy from community organizations, activists and survivors, the Ontario government has announced a new policy framework mandating all school boards to have anti-human trafficking protocols in place to protect students.

Finally.

As long-time advocates that work with survivors of sexual exploitation and trafficking, this announcement is a positive one. Indeed, we have been talking about the importance of including anti-human trafficking information in school curricula for years.

In fact, we think it’s just as important as Math, Science, Reading…you get the picture.

Community organizations know sex trafficking inside and out, and involving us at all levels will ensure that Ontario is actually preventing sex trafficking, and not simply talking about it.

Most cases of youth sexual exploitation look a lot like romantic relationships or friendships in the beginning stages – so it’s key to incorporate information on healthy relationships and consent.

Most importantly, human trafficking thrives in situations of inequity – where there is a power imbalance. Therefore, plans to address sexual exploitation must centre equity – gender equity, racial equity, and more. We need an intersectional approach that recognizes who is trafficked most in Ontario – girls, Indigenous and racialized youth, newcomers, youth in care, LGBTQ2S+ youth, and more. These are not catch phrases, these are the youth we see being exploited and any plan that does not centre them will ultimately fail.

The Framework is very thorough, mentioning marginalized groups like Indigenous and Black youth, and systemic issues like racism and communities targeted by the child welfare system. It is encouraging to see these inequities being outlined, but we want to stress the importance of having grassroots community organizations at the table throughout the entire process to ensure the needs of Indigenous and racialized students are met.

We also hope to see a further gender lens applied to the Framework. We know that although boys can be and are trafficked, the majority of survivors identify as girls. Details on this information was missing from the Framework, as was the importance of addressing unhealthy masculinity and misogyny – two huge drivers of sexual exploitation.

We look forward to smaller grassroots organizations in Ontario having a seat at the table during continued community consultations in the rollout of these plans. Although we may not have the budget needed to promote our work or make it sustainable, many grassroots groups are out there doing a lot of ‘heavy lifting’ in efforts to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and our voices are integral to the success of any plan.

Marissa Kokkoros is the Executive Director of Aura Freedom and author of Relentless Resilience

QUICK FACTS:

  • Aura Freedom has consulted at the Regional, Provincial and Federal levels of government in anti-trafficking efforts, ensuring an intersectional approach is not only considered, but centred. We are a member of several national and international coalitions addressing human trafficking around the world.
  • Aura Freedom was a key advisor to the York Region District School Board in creating their anti-sex trafficking protocol currently in place, as well as an advisor to White Ribbon in creating their digital resource for educators – both of which are mentioned in Ontario’s News Release.
  • We currently sit on numerous Advisory Committees for various initiatives addressing sexual exploitation in Ontario, including Victim Services Toronto, FCJ Refugee Centre, White Ribbon, and more.
  • On July 5th, we were given the Mayor’s Community Safety Award from the City of Toronto for our work preventing youth sexual exploitation and trafficking with our Peer Prevention Project. 
  • On November 25, 2021, Aura Freedom launched its Human Trafficking Info Hub. This grassroots hub of information and resources is part of our ongoing Relentless Resilience movement to end gender-based violence in Canada. The Info Hub – which currently focuses on sexual exploitation – is a culmination of Aura Freedom’s years of grassroots human trafficking prevention and survivor support, as well as continuous consultations with our community and colleagues.

An Award From the City of Toronto

Aura Freedom Awarded Mayor's Community Safety Award

Recognition from our hometown of Toronto.

We’ve been recognized by the City of Toronto with a Mayor’s Community Safety Award for our Peer Prevention Project preventing sexual exploitation and gender-based violence among youth. The grassroots is where the magic happens.

Happy to see the City of Toronto honouring small, grassroots groups doing heavy lifting in their communities. We’re honoured to share space with the other community leaders doing life-changing work in our city.  Check out the other beautiful organizations here.

This award is dedicated to all our supporters who believed in this true grassroots project from day one.

Storytime To Change The World

Storytime To Change the World - by Aura Freedom

Today’s kids know that the world needs more kindness, equality, courage and justice.
 
Check out our Storytime To Change The World series for stories that inspire compassion, advance equality and make the world a better place for all kids. At Aura Freedom, we believe that the ripple effects of loving education can truly change the world.
 
Whether you’re snuggling up with your little ones at the end of the day, or working from home and need some time, these stories are our gift to parents and children everywhere. Each story has been lovingly chosen by our team and our circle of supporters and aims to teach children to value what really matters in life and to achieve our vision of an equal world free from violence for all women and girls. 
 
For kids of all ages!

Read by cool people who give a damn. 

Enter full screen mode, turn up the volume, press play and change the world with us!
 

Highlighting GBV Prevention & Equity at Toronto’s SAFE TO Consultations

To Keep Toronto Safe, We Must Prevent GBV and Trafficking

In March 2021, Aura Freedom was invited to participate in the City of Toronto’s Safe TO Consultations for both the gender-based violence sector and the counter-human trafficking sector.

As always, we brought an intersectional feminist voice to the consultations and advocated for the City of Toronto to prioritize equity-advancing education, projects and policies that prevent gender-based violence and trafficking, not just respond to it. We also discussed how gender-based violence leads to many other issues affecting Toronto, like homelessness, housing and food insecurity, poverty, addiction, crime and more. 

Stay tuned for the final report on those consultations, which has not yet been released. 

Aura Freedom’s Analysis of the 2021 Federal Budget

Our Analysis of the 2021 Federal Budget

On Monday April 19th, Chrystia Freeland, the first-ever woman to hold the title of Federal Minister of Finance, released the Federal Budget for 2021-2022. Women are mentioned often in Budget 2021-22, which sees a plan for universal child care, historic investments for Indigenous and Black communities, and funding for a long-awaited National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence.

This is Aura Freedom’s analysis of Budget 2021-2022, through the lenses of gender-based violence eradication, equity, and intersectional feminism.

ESTABLISHING A CANADA-WIDE EARLY LEARNING & CHILD CARE SYSTEM

The star of the Budget show was definitely child care, and we know we were not alone when we celebrated the announcement of $30 billion over five years to build a high-quality, affordable and accessible early learning and child care system across Canada. The investment will allow for a 50% reduction in fees by the end of 2022, with the end goal of $10 a day for families across the country.

Quality and affordable child care is key to the health and well-being of everyone living in Canada. Women are responsible for the majority of child care in Canada and often must leave the work force because of high child care fees. When we consider gender-based violence, we know that a safe and healthy child care environment for children living in homes with domestic violence is key to their mental and physical health and protection.

If implemented, the positive effects of a $10/day child care system on mothers, families, children, communities, (society as a whole!) are immeasurable.

This is the proactive and smart investing that sees countries thrive.

This is the way we honour, respect, and support working class mothers, marginalized mothers, single mothers, racialized and Indigenous women, LGBTQ2S+ parents, newcomers, and more.

We applaud this investment and will be here to hold the government accountable to ensure this promise is realized.

 

MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN, GIRLS AND TWO SPIRIT PEOPLES

 $2.2 billion over 5 years and $160.9 million ongoing was announced for a National Action Plan in response to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ Calls to Justice, as well as the implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

We applaud this hearty investment into what we see as Canada’s greatest shame: the ongoing genocide of violence against Indigenous women, girls and Two Spirit peoples. Implementation will be key and we know that promises have been made time and again – but time is up.

We would like to relay what our Indigenous partners have told us on numerous occasions – including during our community consultations for the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence – which is that any funding or plans for Indigenous communities must be Indigenous-designed and Indigenous-led, with Indigenous communities at the table well before funding is released so that they are involved and in the driver’s seat from the start.

We look forward to the day when Indigenous women can finally see justice and peace restored to their communities and when they can finally live free from violence and exploitation. Until then, we will be here supporting and advocating in every way we can.

ADVANCING A NATIONAL ACTION PLAN TO END GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE (GBV)

As advocates of the urgent need for a National Action Plan to end the national emergency that is gender-based violence, we welcome the $600 million to finally begin to put this long overdue plan into place and have provided a detailed breakdown and analysis of this section of the Budget.

We are happy and encouraged to see GBV prevention mentioned in this section of the Budget, but it still seems that frontline response is being prioritized when it comes to gender-based violence.

According to the Budget, the government “is moving forward on developing a National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, focusing on ensuring that anyone facing gender-based violence has reliable and timely access to protection and services, no matter where they live.”

But, the National Action Plan is to end gender-based violence, not solely respond to it. And the only way to end the violence is to prevent it. 

In Relentless Resilience, our Beijing +25 report on gender-based violence in Canada released in 2020, we raise the alarm about the lack of funding for GBV prevention and recommend more robust investments in this area.

This doesn’t mean that life-saving frontline agencies are funded less – it means that prevention initiatives are funded just as much. Proper investments in prevention will mean that Canada’s GBV sector can finally stop chasing its own tail and cycles of violence will be disrupted.

Every day, my colleagues in domestic violence shelters see two women leave their facilities and another three show up.

In an open letter penned to Dr. Theresa Tam in 2020, Heidi Illingworth, Federal Ombudswoman for Victims of Crime, implored Canada’s chief public health officer to include violence-prevention in the federal recovery response, saying it’s “critical” that resources be directed at preventing behaviours that lead to intimate partner violence, sexual violence and child abuse. Considering domestic violence alone costs Canadians billions of dollars per year, the economics point to prevention.

Here is what we know about the $600 million for the National Action Plan:

$200 million was proposed to enhance the capacity of organizations such as sexual assault centres, women’s shelters, and other organizations that provide critical and often life-saving services and supports for women, girls, LGBTQ2, and gender non-binary people experiencing violence. Moreover, $30 million was proposed to support crisis hotlines that are experiencing a rise in call volumes during the pandemic and 85.3 million was proposed to support free legal advice for survivors of GBV.

This is all good news. Frontline organizations are critical and their work saves lives. These investments are crucial to the health and well-being of women experiencing violence and their children.

But, we remind the government that gender-based violence is preventable. Femicide is preventable. Sexual exploitation is preventable.

In February 2021, Aura Freedom organized community consultations with the GBV sector on behalf of the Federal government to ask them what they would like to see in a national action plan to end gender-based violence. Over and over again, what we heard (including from frontline organizations) was the need to address the roots causes of GBV in order to prevent it, which include gender inequity, sexism, colonialism, systemic racism, homo/transphobia, ableism, classism, and more.

So, exactly how much will be dedicated to prevention in Budget 2021? It is still unclear, but it is considerably less than frontline response.

Prevention is explicitly mentioned in some areas, like the $50 million dedicated to Safer Relationships to prevent family violence and the $55 million dedicated to preventing violence against Indigenous women and Two Spirit peoples, which we applaud.

But if we do the math (see below), it looks like frontline response is being funded at least twice as much as prevention. If we include the Unclear category, it is upwards of three times as much.

Further comments regarding the National Action Plan investments outlined above:

Safer Relationships

Budget 2021 proposes $50 million over five years for the Public Health Agency of Canada to design and deliver interventions that promote safe relationships and prevent family violence, including intimate partner violence, child maltreatment, and elder abuse.

Although the details of this investment are not clear at the moment, we hope to see partnerships with and allocation of funding to community and feminist organizations that are already doing gender-based violence prevention work.

Gender-Based Violence Program

It seems that some prevention activities may fall under the Federal Gender-Based Violence Program, which is described as follows: Budget 2021 proposes to invest $105 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, for the Department for Women and Gender Equality to enhance its Gender-Based Violence Program. Funding will go to initiatives that engage men and boys. It will increase funding for initiatives to stop human trafficking, including support for at-risk populations and survivors. It will also provide support for testing and implementing best practices to address gender-based violence, with a focus on projects that could be scaled at the national level.

We don’t know how much of the $105 million will go to GBV/human trafficking prevention. In fact, supporting survivors who have already experienced violence is mentioned again in this section. As we expressed above, the idea is not to provide less funding to frontline GBV services, but to provide equal funding for GBV prevention initiatives so as to prevent future violence.

Indigenous Peoples

$55 million over five years will be invested for the Department for Women and Gender Equality to bolster the capacity of Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA+ organizations to provide gender-based violence prevention programming aimed at addressing the root causes of violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people. These investments are in addition to those outlined above for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

This is the type of funding that will eradicate gender-based violence and we desperately need more of it. We applaud this investment and look forward to more progressive funding like this in the future that centres root causes and equity as a way to end GBV.

Protections for Women and Children during Divorce or Separation

This progressive investment is why we do the work we do and this investment is a direct result of grassroots advocacy. Aura Freedom has been very vocal about the connection between Domestic Violence, Amber Alerts and Femicide/Filicide. We know that children’s lives are at risk during or after separation or divorce. Aura Freedom’s Relentless Resilience report and accompanying campaign feature frontline stories (view one here) from advocates that document cases of femicide and filicide during divorce or separation. We are heartened and encouraged to see support for women and children during divorce or separation, as this will prevent femicide and filicide from occurring. Budget 2021 proposes to provide $28.4 million over five years for Justice Canada to support supervision services for parenting time in cases of separation and divorce.

We celebrate this investment and support it whole-heartedly, so that we may never again see another Amber Alert like that of Riya Rajkumar, who was killed at the hands of her father on her 11th birthday. We can, and must, do better.

Support for Newcomers Experiencing Gender-Based Violence

$2 million over five years was announced for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to increase access to information and support for new Canadians facing family and gender-based violence, including enhancing the availability of anti-violence resources.

In our experience, newcomers who experience gender-based violence face multiple barriers to support, as well as systemic violence and discrimination. We see the amount of $2 million as quite low, as it works out to $400,000 per year for all of Canada.

Women living with disabilities are not explicitly referenced in the investments outlined under the National Action Plan to End GBV. We look forward to hearing more about their inclusion in the Plan in the coming months.

 

To conclude our analysis of the investments allocated to the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, we are pleased with the funding allocated to frontline organizations doing crucial work to support survivors. On the other hand, GBV prevention has fallen short. If we are to truly eradicate GBV, then Canada must prioritize the prevention of it. Just as urgent as domestic violence shelters and hotlines is the need to prevent the violence from happening at all; to prevent the trauma that rips through families and communities and costs Canada more in the long run.

No, we can’t “see” the impact of education and prevention happening in real-time. But the fact is, education saves lives, too.

We look forward to hearing more about how the $600+ million dollars for the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence will be allocated to prevention activities that centre equity, including funding and support for grassroots feminist groups doing GBV prevention work and advancing the intersectional feminist movement.

ADDITIONAL BUDGET 2021-2022 INVESTMENTS RELATED TO GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE & EQUITY:

Preventing Radicalization to Violence

This was by far the most surprising element of Budget 2021 for us. We applaud and welcome this progressive investment of $8.2 million over three years to increase support and research for frontline initiatives and programming that prevent and counter radicalization to violence, including violent misogyny. In our work, Aura Freedom often raises awareness about the connection between misogyny and GBV, and how mass murders like the Toronto Van Attack and the Nova Scotia Massacre are, in fact, hate crimes and directly related to misogynistic views of women.

Sexual and Reproductive Health

$45 million over three years was announced to fund community-based organizations that help make sexual and reproductive health care information and services more accessible for vulnerable populations.

How this rolls out will be important. We would like to see Indigenous midwifery services included in these investments, as well as interventions to address the ongoing forced sterilization of Indigenous women. We look forward to other marginalized women being supported through these investments, such as survivors of female genital mutilation and cutting who are not adequately supported by the healthcare system.

Sexual Violence and Misconduct in the Military

Budget 2021 proposes $236.2 million over five years to eliminate sexual misconduct and gender-based violence in the military and support survivors. We applaud this investment as it will create more awareness of sexual violence in the military and break the stigma in a sector that is known to be silent on violence and discrimination. It is important to note that adequately funding GBV prevention in the National Action Plan to End GBV would also prevent violence in the military.

Gun Control

Research shows that femicide and filicide are more likely to occur when a firearm is present in a household where domestic violence or intimate partner violence occurs. We applaud the Budget 2021 proposal of $312 million over five years, with $41.4 million ongoing, to implement legislation to help protect Canadians from gun violence and to fight gun smuggling and trafficking.

Support for Black Communities

Budget 2021 proposed $200 million to help combat anti-Black racism and improve social and economic outcomes in Black communities. We applaud this investment and look forward to seeing the positive effects in the gender-based violence sector as we know one of the root causes of gender-based violence is systemic racism. We look forward to seeing Black communities leading these initiatives in the ways that best suit their communities.

LGBTQ2S+ Support

$15 million over three years was announced for LGBTQ2S+ community organizations supporting LGBTQ2S+ peoples, who often experience gender-based violence. This investment is simply not enough for the many LGBTQ2S+ groups across Canada, many of them doing ground-breaking work with little to no funding. Without proper investments, many grassroots organizations will be forced to close their doors forever, leaving the folks they support even more isolated.

Housing for Women/Children Experiencing Violence

There were various investments made for Housing for GBV survivors and their children, which we welcome with open arms. We applaud the following tailored approaches to Housing for GBV survivors, which will not only save lives, but create healthy and vibrant communities in the future.

 -$250 million in funding will be allocated to support the construction, repair, and operating costs of an estimated 560 units of transitional housing and shelter spaces for women and children fleeing violence.

-$1.5B will be for Rapid Housing to address urgent affordable housing with at least 25% going to women-focused housing projects.

-$315.4 million over seven years through the Canada Housing Benefit is to increase direct financial assistance for low-income women and children fleeing violence to help with their rent payments.

Non-Profit Sector

$400 million will be allocated to a Community Services Recovery Fund to help charities and non-profits better support the economic recovery in our communities. This type of funding can be a game changer for smaller, grassroots organizations and is crucial to the health of many communities. Indeed, the federal Emergency Community Support Fund allowed Aura Freedom to keep our own doors open during the pandemic. We hope to see more core funding supported as opposed to project funding, as well as simplified grant applications and reporting requirements that do not drain smaller organizations of their time and resources.

International: Responding to the Rohingya Crisis

Budget 2021 proposes to allocate $288.3 million over three years to Global Affairs Canada to respond to the Rohingya crisis as part of Canada’s ongoing efforts to address the crisis in Myanmar. Many of us in the GBV sector have heard of the horrific sexual violence being used as a weapon of war against the Rohingya people and hope to see some of this funding allocated for local organizations working with survivors. Moreover, considering the recent actions of the Myanmar military against its own people, we applaud this investment to uphold human rights in Myanmar, along with the rights and safety of women and girls.

All in all, Budget 2021-2022 is a great start to feminist budgeting thanks to its investments in Indigenous communities, affordable child care, housing support for GBV survivors, and investments for a National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence. Of course, there is room for improvement. We are heartened at many of the investments made to respond to gender-based violence, and will continue to advocate for further grassroots support to prevent gender-based violence, advance equity, and empower women, girls and gender diverse peoples across Canada.

We can’t wait anymore.

 

Marissa Kokkoros is the Executive Director of Aura Freedom and author of Relentless Resilience

Relentless Resilience 2 – The Grassroots Speaks Again

Relentless Resilience 2 - The Grassroots Speaks Again

Grassroots consultations for a National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence 

 

Aura Freedom’s original Relentless Resilience report highlighted numerous grassroots voices and the voices of GBV survivors. It also outlined the urgent need for a National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence.

In January 2021, the Government of Canada recognized the need for a National Action Plan, after years of advocacy from the women’s sector.

In February and March 2021 (in partnership with the Federal Government’s Office of Women and Gender Equality Canada and YWCA Canada), Aura Freedom held community consultations with grassroots gender-based violence organizations and survivors to hear more of their recommendations, suggestions and insight in regards to the National Action Plan.

Called the Community Engagement Initiative, this undertaking was “an opportunity for civil society and the Canadian government to help inform the country’s first National Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence” and “influence action on gender-based violence for decades to come.”

Aura Freedom’s goals for these grassroots community consultations were clear:

– To have grassroots voices heard and respected.

– To achieve a country free of gender-based violence.

– To present concrete recommendations to the Government of Canada that will help empower our communities and change Canada and the world as we know it.

Explore our summary report below, which can be seen as a sequel to Relentless Resilience.

Relentless Resilience 2 has arrived.

A year after the original Relentless Resilience, explore the summary report of our consultations with grassroots GBV professionals and survivors on what is needed in Canada’s National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence. 

We are once again elevating community voices to high level government to end the pandemic that is gender-based violence and providing crucial insight on how the Plan must be created.

The Grassroots speaks again.

DOWNLOAD REPORT

65th UN Commission on the Status of Women- Virtual Forum

The Relentless Resilience Campaign is Going to the UN

The 65th UN Commission on the Status of Women is completely virtual this year, which gives you a unique opportunity to attend as if you were a delegate in New York.

Last year, the entire Commission – normally held in New York – was cancelled due to COVID (including Aura Freedom’s event), but we are back virtually this year and want to take you with us!

Register for free HERE to join our team for an amazing two weeks of online feminist events to choose from. Once you register, add our event “Relentless Resilience” on March 18th at 2:00pm to your agenda and we’ll see you there!

Freedom Needs Truth

Freedom Needs Truth - An Open Letter Endorsed by Aura Freedom

So many voices coming together!

Aura Freedom has been very vocal about the harms caused by sensational and untrue theories of human trafficking circulating on social media. 

Freedom Needs Truth is a coalition of organizers, including Aura Freedom, dedicated to fighting human trafficking, who are warning about the dangers posed by QAnon and Pizzagate thories of human trafficking.

On October 21, 2020, Freedom Needs Truth posted an open letter to the media, political parties, and policymakers in the USA.

Click HERE to read the letter and learn more. 

“The truth shall set you free.”

The Children of Pornhub-An Open Thank You Letter to Nicholas Kristoff

The Children of Pornhub – An Open Thank You Letter to Nicholas Kristof

Photo credit: Nicholas Kristof

 

I have followed the journalist Nicholas Kristof for years. As someone working to eradicate gender-based violence and exploitation, his writing has always spoken to me.

Never sensational.

Fact-based.

Compassionate.

Human.

His coverage of wartime sexual violence, human trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence inspired me to research these issues in different ways. In 2012, a good friend of mine (hi Katerina) put the book “Half the Sky” in my hands. This book, which Nicholas co-authored with his wife Cheryl WuDunn, became one of the most important reads of my life.

The pages of that book are still soaked with my tears and notes.

Half the Sky assisted me in my own grassroots research of gender-based violence and human trafficking, and even acted as a ‘map’ of sorts. I even traced Nicholas and Sheryl’s steps to Calcutta, India to find the alleyways that they were describing. These alleyways are where I met the amazing Urmi Basu and her team at New Light who work to end exploitation in the red light district of Kalighat.

That book was, in a way, a guiding light during my field work and study of violence against women from the frontline. From Italy, to Kenya, to India, to Nepal and back home to Canada, I sat and listened to the sobering stories of women, survivors and frontline workers working to end gender-based violence. And throughout many of those years, I carried the book Half the Sky with me wherever I went.

I am now saving the book for my daughter.

In 2013, I founded Aura Freedom International. Based in my hometown of Toronto, Aura Freedom works to end gender-based violence and exploitation through education, research, advocacy and survivor support. We are an intersectional, feminist organization and collaborate with many different grassroots organizations here in Toronto and beyond.

I cannot say enough about Nicholas’s work that not only uncovers injustice, but educates others on what they can do to be part of the change. As an investigative journalist, Nicholas is the real deal. And not because he’s won Pulitzer Prizes, but because I have been on the frontlines and I know what he writes to be true. To you Nicholas, I say thank you for the constant inspiration.

Last week, Nicholas did us all a great service.

Last week, Nicholas used his huge platform (the New York Times) to publish a story about rape videos and child exploitation being monetized on Pornhub. In my work, I have supported survivors who have had their images on Pornhub (among other sites) and I know how life shattering that experience was for them. One of the survivors I support ended up admitting herself to a mental health facility because her abuser still had images and video of her and was threatening to post them. Pornhub gets 3.5 billion visits a month, which is even more than Amazon. In Nicholas’s article, he calls upon Canadian leadership to look into this issue since Pornhub is Canadian-owned, calling on Justin Trudeau himself for action.

Here’s an excerpt of the article, which is also linked below.

Yet there’s another side of the company: Its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. A search for “girls under18” (no space) or “14yo” leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren’t of children being assaulted, but too many are.

After a 15-year-old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub — in 58 sex videos. Sexual assaults on a 14-year-old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to the authorities not by the company but by a classmate who saw the videos. In each case, offenders were arrested for the assaults, but Pornhub escaped responsibility for sharing the videos and profiting from them.

Those working with Aura Freedom know that we are an organization that supports all women, including sex workers and those working in the pornography industry.

But, as Nicholas states in his article, this is not about pornography – this is about rape.

Rape videos of kids are being shown on Pornhub.

Unconscious women are being raped on Pornhub.

Revenge videos from abusers are being uploaded to Pornhub.

Folks are watching these videos and becoming desensitized to violence and rape. Moreover, youth are consuming this content and forming skewed perceptions of what consensual sex looks like. Anyone working to dismantle the patriarchal structures in place that allow gender-based violence to thrive knows that these videos directly contribute to violence, misogyny, rape culture and slut shaming.

Silencing the survivors who have been exploited on Pornhub does a disservice to all survivors.

Much like Aura Freedom, Nicholas Kristof has spoken out against the QAnon theories and other misperceptions of human trafficking circulating on social media and the damaging effect they have to survivors and those working with them. He is by no means a journalist who perpetuates moral panics and this is why his article has been received so well by so many.

So Nicholas, from so many of us working in the GBV sector, we thank you. Thank you for your courage, your honesty, and your humanity. We are so grateful.

 

In solidarity,

Marissa Kokkoros

Executive Director, Aura Freedom International

 

Link to Nicholas Kristof’s article – The Children of Pornhub: 

Link to Globe & Mail article on the subject with comments by Aura Freedom: