Exploitative material isn’t entertainment, it’s the commercialization of women’s bodies. It’s harmful to everyone. If your husband is on phone all the time, it’s important to know, that what he’s doing on his phone really matters.

If it seems like your husband is on his phone all the time and cares more about what’s on his phone than he does about you, you need support. Attend one of our live, daily Group Sessions TODAY.

Exploitative Material Is Harmful To Women

If he’s using exploitative materials on his phone, there are the real implications of his actions.

If your husband is on the phone so much that he’s ignoring you or dismissing you or not helping with the family, it’s possible that there’s more going on that meets the eye. His attitudes and choices may actually be emotional abuse. To find out if he is using any of these 19 emotional abuse tactics, take our free emotional abuse test

Transcript: Husband is On Phone All The Time?

Anne: I have Laila Mickelwaite on today’s episode. She has appeared on the podcast before to talk about her nonprofit, Justice Defense Fund, and how they combat the exploitation industry, which victimizes women and children through material often uploaded and viewed by the victims’ husbands or their groomers. Welcome, Laila.

Laila: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you.

Anne: I appreciate you. You have done so much in such a short amount of time. And I’m hopeful this will help bring more awareness to women about the possible implications if your husband is on the phone all the time using exploitative material. Let’s start with your new book called Takedown.

Laila: Yes, so excited to finally have that out after years of writing. The reason I wanted to write this book was to get the truth out about P**nhub and its parent company. It has a monopoly on the global industry. I want to get the truth about what has happened to so many victims on the public record, to educate people, activate them, inspire them, and ultimately get more people informed and engaged in the fight for justice, not only against P##nhub.

MindGeek, was recently renamed ILO to try to distance themselves from their toxic image. I really want to help take down and, most importantly, prevent illegal content from distribution on user generated sites. So that’s why I wrote the book. And one hundred percent of all proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Justice Defense Fund.

Global Reach & Petitioning for Justice

Laila: To help this cause, the fight for justice, to hold mega abusers accountable, and to really bring needed closure and restitution to victims. So that’s the purpose. You can go to takedownbook.com and there you can purchase the book at really any major online retailer. Penguin Random House publishes it, so you can find audiobook or ebook or hardcover.

You can find it in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. And someone is translating it into Chinese, but yeah, takedownbook.com and there you can also sign the petition. Over 2 million people signed the petition to shut down P##hub and hold its executives accountable from every country in the world.

Implications of what he’s doing on his phone

Laila: This isn’t only for exploited children. Their lives are completely shattered because of the distribution of their trauma on P**hub and its sister sites. But also adult victims, victims assaulted and trafficked. Also victims who have consensually recorded videos and then had it non-consensually distributed, which is very traumatic for them.

Anne: Yeah. It is. We have women in our community who have had that happen, and it’s been horrific. Then they find out their husband was on the phone all the time watching to see if his non-consensual videos got the views on YouTube. It’s awful

Laila: And we know that according to surveys, victims of what we call image-based abuse have almost a 50 percent rate of suicidal ideation. So it’s very traumatizing. What happens is when the videos are uploaded, they become the immortalization of trauma. People download them and then upload again and again. They understand that this will happen in perpetuity for the rest of their lives.

They can’t escape it, and so this is horrific. It was happening en masse on the world’s most popular and trafficked site. When the fight began at the beginning of 2020, just for context, it was the largest and most popular site. But by the end of the Corona virus pandemic, which was in full swing, they had actually become the fifth most trafficked website.

So the fifth most visited website across the entire internet had 170 million visits per day, 62 billion visits per year, and enough content uploaded every year, every 12 months, that it would take 169 years to watch if you put those videos back to back.

MindGeek’s Monopoly

Laila: Owned by a parent company called MindGeek, who with a $362 million loan had rolled up the industry, owning most of the world’s most popular sites and brands. So, what I discovered at the beginning of February 2020, this is about 15 years in the fight against trafficking. And I’m paying attention to the headlines. I’m looking and investigating the industry and its ties to trafficking and abuse.

And I see some really concerning headlines. At the end of 2019, one of them was a 15 year old girl missing for a year. They found her when a user tipped off her distraught mother. He recognized her daughter on the site. She was assaulted in 58 videos sold for profit. And then the Sunday Times had done an investigation. They found dozens of illegal videos within minutes, even children as young as three years old.

And then, like I said, it’s not just children, but also adults. A woman named Nicole Adamando’s partner from New York tortured and assaulted her. He filmed the abuse and uploaded it. She killed him in self-defense but was then sentenced to life in prison and separated from her two young children.. These are just horrifying headlines. That happened at the end of 2019.

As an advocate against abuse and trafficking, of course, these arrested my attention. I had a haunting question that came to mind.

The Fight for Accountability: When What’s on his phone hurts people

Laila: And that was how in the world did this abuse end up on P**hub? And then, I discovered by testing the upload system, what millions of people already knew, and that was all it took to upload. And this is the reason why the site became infested with illegal content for multiple reasons. The primary reason was that they allowed unlimited upload of user generated images.

Anyone with an mobile phone could film a video anywhere in the world and upload it using just an email address. The platform did not check IDs to verify whether the person in the video was a child, underage teen, or tween. It did not verify consent to ensure the video did not involve an assault or trafficking victim. In under 10 minutes, anyone could upload a video to the site, which led to the platform becoming infested with videos of real crimes.

And that is how all this began, this fight to hold them accountable for what has happened. Now that has destroyed so many victims’ lives.

Anne: Thank you. Thank you so much. Like, you didn’t turn away, you went toward it. And that is like so brave. Your work and the way you’re helping women understand the magnitude of this issue, can’t be underestimated. So thank you. This is why it is so important that we are all more aware. So if a husband is on the phone all the time, you’re saying there’s a real possibility he may be supporting this exploitative industry. Since this effects everyone, what can we do to help.]

Community Support: A husband is on phone all the time?

Laila: I would just say thank you to everybody who’s been part of this movement. Because it certainly hasn’t been a one-woman fight. I took to Twitter using the hashtag trafficking hub after making that discovery. Everybody who cared caused it. Everybody who saw the injustice and didn’t look away, who shared, who signed.

Who even took to the streets, week after week with signs protesting. In front of the MindGeek headquarters in Montreal, LA, London, South Africa and all over the world. People who joined this fight in a meaningful way. Of the hundreds of survivors who came forward to powerfully tell their stories and raise their voices, even though they were attacked.

And to the journalists, lawmakers, and lawyers, so many people who came together to take on this behemoth of abuse. So from where I sit, I am so grateful to many people who listen to the betrayal trauma podcast, who have signed the petition, who’ve been a part of this. Without all of us coming together, this definitely wouldn’t have been possible.

Anne: That’s how we feel about the work we do here. At Betrayal Trauma Recovery we’re educating women about what to look for, and we’re building community support in our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions. Through betrayal Instagram posts and betrayal trauma videos.  We reach women, especially if they’re like, “Why is my husband on the phone all the time? Something feels off.” So our focus is helping women feel safe and make progress toward a peaceful life within their own home. But in terms of your work can you share the progress that’s been made since we talked last?

The Movement

Laila: Yes, huge strides, we still have a ways to go. The fight’s not over, but the story is told in the book Takedown. I wrote it in first person present tense. It starts on the night when I’m testing the upload system, and making this discovery that the site is what I call a crime scene. Not a site, a crime scene. I launched the Trafficking Hub hashtag and launched the petition that started to go viral.

Survivors are coming forward daily. Whistleblowers from the company are coming forward and sharing internal documents and all the ways this company operates that intentionally enable the global distribution and monetization of crime. They’re peeling back the onion layers of complicity of owners.

Credit Card Company Ties: is your husband paying for exploitative material on his phone?

Anne: Yeah, if he’s on the phone all the time looking at this stuff, how is he paying for it?

Laila: We fought the credit card companies so hard for years. Finally, in 2022, they cut them off once and for all. Discover MasterCard, Visa, join PayPal, cut all ties with the site. Because one consideration drives every decision, that’s profit. What will make them the most profit?

The credit card companies cutting ties was the worst thing that could have happened to them. Over the last four and a half years, they have removed 91 percent of the entire website. They reduced their content from 56 million pieces in 2020 to 5.2 million today. The

Thanks to the participation of so many people, Financial Times called this probably the biggest takedown of content in internet history. Because these were unverified videos, meaning they had no idea if they were children, teens, victims of assault, trafficking, or image based abuse. They had no clue. And so many of them were criminal content. And so they were forced to take down that much of the site.

The CEO and the COO were forced to resign. The secret majority shareholder of the company, who had been hiding his identity from the public for years, was found. And he was exposed and located. And today he’s being sued by dozens of victims. Nearly 300 victims are suing ****hub and its parent company in 25 lawsuits, including multiple certified class actions for tens of thousands of child victims.

The Future Goals for justice

Laila: And the U.S. federal government has criminally charged them for intentionally profiting from trafficking. And sold as a distressed asset to a disgustingly named private equity firm. It was hastily concocted, and they named themselves Ethical Capital Partners, but this is what’s happened so far. And we hope to see full justice, meaning victims are provided the restitution, that we see full criminal prosecution.

Ultimately, we’d like to see them shut down completely to send a message to others that not only bring justice to victims. But to send a message to anyone who would operate like them, that this impunity, this exploitation for profit, will just not be tolerated. And hopefully that can deter future abusers. Because if a husband is on the phone all the time using pornography, it indicates he’s involved with the abuse of these women. As a result of all of this, what we really want to see.

We want to see agent consent verification policies for all user generated sites. To prevent this from happening in the future. They’ve refused to do it for so many years. They set up the business model to profit from unrestricted amounts of content. Because the way they make money on the site is by selling advertising impressions. So on this site alone, they were selling 4. 6 billion ad impressions on the site every day.

And in order to sell that many ad impressions on the site, they have to have massive amounts of traffic coming to the site. And in order to have massive amounts of traffic, they have to have inventory to show up in Google to drive those results. So they have to have so much content in order to drive that traffic.

verifying indentities

Laila: And so they don’t want to limit content or any friction in uploading. They want it free for all. Upload whatever you want. They didn’t care what is being uploaded. They just wanted videos, which actually were crime scene videos. So that’s why they resisted for so long until even September of 2024, after all this happened. They finally said, and we will have to see what’s going to happen if they’re actually going to do it properly.

But they said they’ll start to verify the ID of the individuals in new videos uploaded to the site. But they still have to account for 5 million videos uploaded, without verifying who’s in them and whether they consented to that being uploaded. So we’re demanding the rest come down.

Anne: Wow, sorry, it’s so intense. That anyone could be educated about this even a little bit and say that money is more important than a victim’s emotional, and psychological safety is insane. It’s like shocking. The final step in this true crime story is to legally and financially hold the founders accountable. So that others don’t replicate this business model. And then I have a follow up question about the new buyers.

Laila: Ethical Capital Partners, yeah, the new owners. One of the things that’s so important in this fight, and I’m so proud of, is the survivors who courageously came forward. To personally sue by name, not just the corporation, but the individual owners. And I’ll just share the story of one particular survivor who has just led the charge on doing this.

One Survivor’s Story

Laila: And her name is Serena, and she was an innocent 14 year old from Bakersfield, California. Who had videos of her abuse uploaded again and again. They had a download button on every video, so anybody could possess these videos on their devices. And then upload them again and again to the internet. She would beg them to take these videos down.

And if they would even answer her, you know, most of the time they would ignore her, she said. But then if they answered, they would hassle her to prove she was a victim, prove she was underage in the videos. And even if she could get them down, they would just go up again. And this sent her on a spiral of trauma and despair. She dropped out of school because she was being bullied. And she got addicted to drugs to numb the pain. She tried to kill herself multiple times.

And then wound up homeless, living out of a car. But today, Serena has told her story, not only that, but she sued. Also its owners individually, the CEO, the COO, the secret majority shareholder exposed. Not only that, she’s also suing Visa for their participation in all this, for their processing of her criminal abuse. This is because if a husband is on phone all the time using pornography, he’s abusing these victims too.

And she’s suing the hedge funds that gave MindGeek the money to have their business in the first place. Colbeck Capital, Redwood Capital, and dozens of survivors are doing the same, suing the individual owners. I think that is so important. It sends a message to those who make the decisions. You can’t hide behind a corporate veil. You can’t just shield yourself with a corporation.

New Name & New Man In Charge doesn’t solve the problem

Laila: That these decisions that you enact, because at the end of the day, these are policies that come from the top. That they will be personally responsible for that. And I think when that happens, it will create a huge deterrent effect. Where the owners of these companies will be afraid to make those same decisions because they will know. That they are not immune from accountability.

So I think that is so important. And with the new owners, they’ve called themselves Ethical Capital to try to distance themselves and whitewash history. And they could name themselves something else and maybe try to get people to forget. But the victims will never forget what happened to them. They’ll live with that for the rest of their lives. And they’re currently fighting for justice, even against the new owners.

And one thing that’s disturbing to know is that the new face of the company is a man named Solomon Friedman. He’s a criminal defense attorney and has spent his career defending criminals. Time Magazine reported he has had significant experience defending criminals and those who are abusers. He wants to do the same for this company. However, we’re going to keep fighting to ensure the truth is told.

And even to this day, like I said, there’s unverified content on the site. And there are illegal videos still up, even after all this happened. So we’re just going to keep sharing the truth.

Anne: Yeah. Because maybe women don’t know that if there husband is on the phone all the time using this exploitative materials they’re creating demand for these videos. With the credit card companies cutting off people’s ability to use credit cards on these sites. Are people using crypto now?

Using Crypto Currency: what your husband may be using to pay for exploitative material on his phone

Laila: Yes, they can use crypto, so they can still transact, unfortunately. When it was sold to the new owners, was sold as a distressed asset because they lost their credit card companies. Yes, they still can transact using crypto.

Anne: It just goes more and more criminal, more underground. I’m not gonna argue that going underground is good for it, right? Less people will use it. If a husband is on the phone all the time using it, it victimizes these women.

Laila: True, it’s so interesting. You said that, because that’s what I hear from victims themselves. They say the most traumatizing part of having these videos distributed is that they’re distributed on the surface web. Where Google crawls. Some of these victims have had their names attached to the videos, their school name. Their town where just anybody can find them. So when they go to the grocery store, they’re standing in line wondering who has seen my assault video?

Because it is on the mainstream, most popular sites in the world, accessible to anyone. And like you said, even accessible to children, which is so horrifying to consider. That any child can click a few buttons on a device could end up on the home page. Where there have been criminal videos, even on the home page itself, side by side by real assault videos.

And having a child be exposed to that trauma as their introduction to sexuality, as their education is so frightening.

Anne: That’s abuse.

Laila: It is abuse. It’s a form of abuse. I talk about the need to protect children on both sides of the screen from viewing this content and also being in the content.

Age Verification Laws

Laila: And I’m so encouraged by this wave of momentum that we’ve seen recently, where states are starting to pass age verification laws for users. It’s interesting, because they have aggressively opposed age verification for users. And they have actually shut themselves down in states that have enacted age verification. Or made them liable when a child views their site. So in some cases, states have said, parents could sue the company for not having age verification in place.

And in that case, they’ve shut themselves down because they don’t want to lose the money. They don’t want to pay. And we even have the senior community manager is on the record saying what the real reason is. They cite like privacy concerns, this is a privacy and free speech issue. When the senior community manager said this costs us money.

And that it would basically be devastating to their revenue. And so, that just shows it’s like this in every case. They’re putting profit before the safety of people. In this case, the safety of children, not to have to witness a crime.

Anne: I think Utah passed that. But still, if a husband is on phone all the time using exploitative material, it funds this revenue.

The Supreme Court & Age Verification

Laila: Yeah, there are a number of states, Alabama did and Texas. It’s actually going to the Supreme Court, because in Texas they passed the law, and then they refused to comply. They were sued by the state of Texas. Then they countersued to stop the law from being enacted, they lost. And then they appealed, and then they lost. And now they’re protesting it.

So it was a free speech coalition. They was one of the plaintiffs in the case to appeal, and then it’s going to be heard at the Supreme Court.

Laila: I think the date is January 15. And so they’ll consider whether this is constitutional to enact age verification for users of these kind of sites.

Anne: Are any senators or anyone consistently voting against these type of bills?

voting for safety over profit

Laila: I don’t have anyone voting against these types of bills. What I’ve seen is mostly unanimous support from both sides. Bipartisan support, because the ones opposed to this are the industry people. Because it costs them money. It costs them traffic. And the financial incentive there is to oppose it. But anybody who has common sense, who cares about the safety of children, doesn’t want children to access the sites.

And some people say we need device level verification, where that would be Apple, for example. That would instill in the device itself safety for children not to access adult sites. And then some people say, no, it should be at the website level. And I’m saying it should be both. When we are trying to implement safety when we’re driving a car. You have a seatbelt, a roll bar, an airbag, and various ways to protect.

I think in this case, it’s both, and yes, do device level verification for kids to protect them. But then also require these sites to have third party age verification for users of those sites.

Anne: I’m interested in seeing who starts citing free speech issues and not voting for this. If there is anybody, hopefully it will be unanimous. But if there is, I would like to call them out and have people know that this is the person who voted against this. Because like, Oh, here’s somebody who likes pedophiles. I’m interested in seeing how that shakes out.

Privacy Concerns & Free Speech: does your husband have a right to view this on his phone?

Laila: Yeah, and just to clarify, so there’s the age verification laws that we need to see for those accessing the videos. And then there’s the age verification we need for those in the videos. It seems like there’s even less opposition to age verification for those in the videos than the user side. Because some people say, Oh, I don’t want to give over identifying information to access this kind of site.

It’s my right to access a site without having to do that. Which isn’t a great argument, because people give over identifying information to shop on Amazon, to use PayPal, to go on Airbnb.

Anne: Yeah, but they don’t care if people know they bought something on Amazon. If a husband uses his phone all the time to view this material, and doesn’t want his wife to know he’s using it, he’ll lie to her. These types of exploitative men think it’s their right that nobody knows. They should access this without their wife knowing, because if their wife knows, she might be like, I’m not into this.

And he wants to maintain power and control in his own home by controlling the narrative of who he is and what his character is. So he does not want his wife to find out. A husband is on phone all the time using exploitative material, funds victimization.

Laila: Well, then I think those who oppose it need to be clear and honest. And say, it’s not that I care about my privacy. This is not a speech issue. This is, I don’t want anyone to know that I’m going to this site. It’s generally not a privacy issue. It’s privacy about this issue.

Exposing Exploitative Men: Husband is on Phone all the time?

Anne: Totally, but men with an exploitative character will never tell the truth. When a husband is on phone all the time, using pornography, exploiting women, they never say, I want to lie to my wife and live a double life, so I’m going to vote against this bill. They will never say that. They’ll always cite free speech, and say they don’t want government intervention.

I don’t know what they’ll say, but they’ll never say, I want to lie to my wife about who I am. Just talking about the man who would claim free speech stuff. It’s not free speech to assault a child, so no.

Laila: That’s actually true, because when we’re talking about free speech, we’re assuming these sites are distributing legal content. We know that much of the content distributed, because we have figures, victims, cases, and evidence. That a significant portion of what is on these user generated sites. Children can freely access illegal content, which is contraband.

It is not an idea, an expression. It’s not any form of legal material. There’s no protection for that kind of content to be distributed. I think that’s why it’s important to make sure that we are talking about the reality of these sites. Because people, perhaps judges, and those considering these cases might have this idea that this is Playboy, right?

That this is the content you might’ve seen 50 years ago or 20 years ago. But with the advent of user generated content and unrestricted uploads, so much of it is actually criminal content. That’s important for them to consider. What is the material being distributed on these sites?

Protecting Victims & Updating Laws: Husband is on phone all the time?

Laila: And children need to be protected from viewing. But adult victims and children need to be protected from being used. If a husband is on phone all the time using exploitative material, it produces demand for these videos. We’ve had a law in place in the U.S. since 1988 called U.S. C 2257, which traditionally governed the brick and mortar industry. We think about Exploitation Valley in L. A. and the way studios had produced it.

This required them to do age verification and record keeping. And in fact, the Department of Justice could at any time call for the inspection of those documents. And if they didn’t have them, it was actually a criminal offense. However, now with this new model of free user generated distribution. They’ve just completely gone around that important regulation, so we need to update our laws.

Anne: Do you know of any victim who has used material on these sites or discoveries from her husband on the phone all the time as proof in her own assault case? Not to sue, but criminally to charge her rapist or someone who coerced her?

Laila: Yes, and it’s not her in the case that I’m going to cite right now. I mean, there are other cases of hers, but this is a him. There was a case of a 12 year old boy from Alabama drugged, overpowered and assaulted by a man named Rocky Shea Franklin. And he filmed the abuse, and he uploaded 23 of those videos. Using titles that indicated this was abuse of a child. They were sold, in a profit sharing relationship with the site. Police located the devices.

When they went on the devices, they found he had uploaded them.

Videos Used As Criminal Case Evidence: Husband is on Phone all the time?

Laila: And they saw the videos on the site. They documented them as evidence they used against him. He uploaded the videos of the victim. He’s in prison for 40 years. So, yes, that has definitely happened in more than one instance, where the evidence of the crime were the videos.

Anne: I wonder if more victims could do that. I know of at least a handful of women in our community who have had videos of them uploaded by their husbands. Like the woman you talked about at the beginning of this episode, and they didn’t know about it. Another’s husband is on phone all the time using pornography, victimizing women.

Laila: A recent case shocked the world, horrifying people but also inspiring them with her bravery in holding her husband accountable.. Her name is Giselle Pellicott, and she’s in France. She’s over 70 years old.

Anne: I did see this. It’s amazing.

Laila: Yeah, I can’t believe how brave she is. And I completely understand when victims want to be Jane Doe’s because I 100% understand that. So not to say that those who are out there as Jane Doe’s are not courageous because they are. But Giselle’s out there in this public trial. She demanded it be a public trial, her husband actually drugged her. And when she was unconscious, he would recruit men to come and assault her, and he would film it.

The police gathered thousands of videos that he had taken, showing how he recruited men from the community.

Giselle Pellicott’s Brave Fight

Laila: Lawyers, policemen, doctors, whatever, not just like guys who are just in their basements. Like you would imagine would do this, but guys who were answering these ads that he’s putting out. To come and assault his wife as she was unconscious. So anyway, she’s having a public trial, and yeah, the evidence of the crime is there.

He recorded the actual abuse. And one of the things she insisted, which was shocking to many people, was to have the court actually play some of those videos. So that she could shame. Her idea was to put the shame of what happened on the abuser, not the victim. So they could sit there and be ashamed to see what they did in front of the court. Which was like wow, like people were like, I can’t believe she did that.

As this story went public and gained viral traction worldwide, it inspired people everywhere. Individuals at the Justice Defense Fund have shared that similar incidents happened to them. Their husbands or partners drugged them unconscious, assaulted them, and later uploaded evidence, such as videos, to devices or websites.

But this is horrifying that this is not a one off case. This is actually happening.

Anne: I’ve talked with many trafficking experts, and the most likely person to traffic you is your boyfriend, right? Or even maybe your husband. Men who are intent on trafficking, groom you from the beginning. And many women end up marrying their trafficker. This is why it is so important to pay attention when a husband is on phone all the time-to know what he’s doing on there.

Lover Boy Method Of Trafficking: Husband is on phone all the time?

Anne: They don’t realize traffickers targeted them from the beginning. Traffickers often pose as boyfriends to groom their victims, sometimes marrying them and manipulating them into being filmed while having sex. Even if he’s your husband, and you don’t believe he’s intending to do harm, he’s still trafficking. And that may be what he’s doing when he’s on phone all the time. His online choices could harm other people.

Laila: Yeah, they call it the lover boy method of trafficking. It is common and used all the time. I don’t know if anyone has heard the powerful story of Annie Lobert. She believed she loved this person, her abuser. It’s a powerful story. It does happen often, and they use it as a tactic and method, and prey on that vulnerability. And it’s horrible, but yes, many times it’s familial, someone you know and trust.

Help for Victims

Anne: There might be a woman listening today, who is currently experiencing this, and wondering if their boyfriend or husband is on phone all the time viewing exploitative material. If that’s the case, what would you say to her?

Laila: They can go to the Justice Defense Fund website, justicedefensefund.org. And there is an intake form where you can fill out a few questions. You don’t have to talk in detail about what happened to you. You fill out a help form and connect with a trauma-informed, licensed representative who advocates at the Justice Defense Fund.. They’ll connect with you, hear your story, and help with whatever the next steps might be from there.

Anne: Thank you so much for your amazing work. I appreciate you so much.

Laila: Likewise, thank you so much for having me on and for this conversation, and I hope we can stay in touch.