Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.
The world’s most popular pornography site XVideos hosts child sex trafficking videos and its owners profit off the sexual abuse of children, a new class action alleges.
In a proposed international class action lawsuit filed against WebGroup Czech Republic and related entities this week in California, Plaintiff Jane Doe alleges the company benefited from a sex trafficking venture and distributing child pornography, and also failed to report child sexual abuse material.
The class action lawsuit states that Doe, who is using a pseudonym in the lawsuit due to fear of retaliation, and others were the victims of childhood sex trafficking. They say videos and images of their childhood sex trafficking were sold and distributed on websites owned, operated, managed, and controlled by WebGroup Czech Republic.
“Defendants have exploited this child sexual abuse material for profit,” the lawsuit alleges. “The Defendants, on their websites, created, organized, and disseminated images and videos that depict child sexual abuse, often referred to as child pornography. Each of these images and videos are crime scenes the Defendants monetized.”
The class action says Doe was under the age of eighteen when she was filmed performing commercial sex acts and child pornography, which was made available for viewing on websites owned or operated by WebGroup Czech Republic, violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and other laws.
“When she was still a minor, a sex trafficker forced Jane Doe to participate in the creation of videos of adults engaging in sex acts with her. As a minor, Jane Doe’s traffickers also sold her for sex and some of the sex acts forced upon Jane Doe were recorded on video and uploaded to the XVideos website,” the lawsuit states.
The videos continue to turn a profit for the WebGroup Czech Republic as they are downloaded, and one XVideos “content partner” continues to be a promoted channel on the site, even after Doe’s videos were removed in response to a cease and desist letter sent in 2020 identifying the videos as illegal child sexual abuse material, the lawsuit states.
“Jane Doe continues to be traumatized, every single day, by WGCZ, whose platform is being used to permit the continued and repeated dissemination of these horrific videos for sexual gratification and for profit.”
XVideos is the most popular pornography website in the world and the seventh most popular website, visited more than Netflix, Amazon, and Wikipedia, claims the lawsuit.
The class action says XVideos receives more than three billion visits a month. WGCZ’s second most popular website, XNXX, is the ninth most visited website in the world and together these two websites garner over five billion visits a month, double the traffic of their biggest competitor, Pornhub — which is also the subject of a child pornography class action lawsuit
Users can access the site for free without creating an account, can create an account to get benefits from WGCZ, or pay for a premium Red Service account, which is managed, operated and controlled by WGCZ, says the lawsuit.
To upload content, users have to create an account, and to be disguised behind a VPN they can verify the account with a photo. Users can also upgrade to a channel – where they have to upload three high-quality videos of a certain length – to monetize the account, the class action lawsuit states.
“There is a stated requirement that the account holder be at least 18 years old, but however, it is unclear how this requirement is verified,” the lawsuit says.
“Once an account is verified videos may be uploaded. If a video posted by an amateur pornographer includes other parties or individuals, WGCZ has no effective process to verify age. A user who creates a channel on XVideos can ‘promote [their] brand through various ads and links’ and their videos can be monetized. WGCZ promotes and profits from these partner channels including verified partner channels that distributed Plaintiff’s abuse videos.”
The class action alleges XVideos accounts permit and encourage subscription and premium content placement whereby WGCZ profits from images and videos of commercial sex acts, including the sexual abuse and rape of children. The lawsuit adds that WGCZ’s “related search terms” and tags make it easy for pedophiles to find the exact content they want: child sexual abuse material, including that of plaintiff Jane Doe.
The lawsuit sites International Labor Organization 2014 statistics that show approximately 4.5 million people were victims of forced sexual exploitation globally, and the violation of their human rights yielded an estimated annual profit of $99 billion dollars for sex traffickers.
The United States Department of Justice estimates that pornographers have recorded the abuse of more than one million children in the United States, says the class action.
In the last two years, one of the defendants in the lawsuit, Digital Ocean, reported more than 75 instances of child pornography to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, claims the lawsuit
As of December 2020, WGCZ, was not registered as an ESP with the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children to report child pornography and child sex trafficking, on its site, says the class action.
Doe is seeking to represent any person who was under eighteen years of age at the time they were depicted in any pornography video or image on any of the defendants’ websites, and she is also representing a subclass of California residents.
Doe is suing WebGroup Czech Republic and related entities for benefiting from a sex trafficking venture, receipt and distribution of child pornography, violation of duty to report child sexual abuse material, and violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law.
The lawsuit seeks certification of the class action, injunctive relief, and the removal of child pornography from defendant-owned sites, damages, legal fees, restitution, and a jury trial.
Attorneys working with Top Class Actions are looking to help individuals and their families who were trafficked into sex work. Check here to see if you qualify for the Human Sex Trafficking Lawsuit.
Jane Doe is represented by Abbas Kazerounian, Esq. of Kazerouni Law Group, APC, and Kimberly Lambert Adams of Levin Papantonio Rafferty.
The XVideos Child Sex Trafficking Class Action Lawsuit is Jane Doe v. WebGroup Czech Republic, et al., Case No. 2:21-cv-02428, in the U.S. District Court Central District of California.
Read About More Class Action Lawsuits & Class Action Settlements:
