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