August 31, 2021
For Immediate Release
For More Information: info@ruthinstitute.org
Ruth Inst. Decries OnlyFans’ Decision to Continue Exploiting Women and Children
“OnlyFans has decided that its pornography profits matter more than the dignity of women and children,” said Ruth Institute President Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
Last week, OnlyFans reversed a decision, made just five days earlier, to ban sexually explicit material from its site, starting October 1. Morse explained: “The initial decision wasn’t due to an attack of conscience, since the owners of OnlyFans have none, but by the fact that the federal government is breathing down their necks.”
More than 100 members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, signed an August 10th letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, demanding that the Justice Department investigate the platform, dubbed the ‘paywall of porn’ for facilitating the sexual exploitation of children.
Pornographers associated with the site are paid a per-view or monthly fee to access the material they’ve posted. Earlier this year, police in Dade Co. Florida arrested a couple for human trafficking and promoting a sexual performance by a child, after the friend of an underage girl saw explicit videos of her posted on OnlyFans.
“OnlyFans has grown fat on the suffering of children,” Morse said. “They hide behind euphemisms like ‘artistic expression’ and ‘inclusiveness,’ and cry ‘censorship.’ That’s absurd. The sexual exploitation of children is not only illegal, it violates every standard of decent human behavior.
“We’re told that the site, which claims to have 100 million viewers and generate $3 billion in revenue annually, reversed course after an outcry from so-called sex workers, who use the site to sell their product. They said it was unfair to target their work. Tough. There’s no place for pornography on the Internet. If it facilitates the exploitation of children, that makes it so much worse.”
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that in 2019, it was aware of 10 cases involving missing children associated with OnlyFans. So far this year, the number of such cases jumped to 80.
Morse urged the Justice Department to “immediately launch a thorough investigation of the site and, if the evidence bears it out, to prosecute OnlyFans to the full extent of the law.”
The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.
Jennifer Roback Morse is the author of The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.
To schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact info@ruthinstitute.org.
