Montreal (AFP)
"Horrified", "shocked": For several years, Rachel, a 38-year-old Canadian, 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.
"Watching the video that night made me sick and this feeling never went away," the young woman told AFP on condition of anonymity (her first name was changed at her request).
This video, since removed from the site, still continues.
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, between resignation and hope.
One evening in August 2020, this Canadian, who lives in Alberta, a province in the west of the country, discovered that her husband, from whom she was recently separated, had published, three years earlier, a video of this assault while she seems to be sleeping.
Rachel says she found a folder of photos on a hard drive, which led her to her husband's Pornhub account where she first discovered the video.
"The reason I didn't know there was a video was because I was unconscious throughout the video," said the social work student, who does not remember the assault.
The title and the key words accompanying the recording of about four minutes, with the words "sleeping pills", suggested that she was drugged.
- "Horrified" -
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 just kept going," she adds.
Her video generated at least ten pages of results on Google, she recalls.
The next morning, she went to the police who launched an investigation.
A few days later, the video "disappeared on its own" from Pornhub, she continues, and the associated keywords no longer yielded any results.
According to Rachel, the video was also posted in 2017 on affiliates of MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub, before being withdrawn last year.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.
These measures would have "almost nothing changed" to her situation, she laments: 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 recorded to hard drives and can keep coming back. And it is."
"Once it's there, it's there forever."
- "Permanent stress" -
The young woman admits that the "emotional side is the most difficult" to deal with.
Rachel has since suffered from an anxiety disorder.
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She says she is often woken up by panic attacks or nightmares.
"It's a kind of permanent stress", which causes nausea, digestive disorders.
"You are all alone," she said.
“There's no one to call, no one who can help you. You can look who owns these little anonymous porn sites and get the administrator's address, but nothing changes. nothing you can 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 table 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.
Rachel, who spends a few days each month trying to have the registration withdrawn, says it is currently generating several hundred results, up from 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.
© 2021 AFP