Learn more about local organizations helping survivors of sexual violence despite facing many obstacles and so much more. It’s 2023. We need all of you. You can no longer sit on the sidelines.
Pornhub’s shadowy parent company MindGeek said it is changing its name as its new owners seek a “fresh start” for the scandal-ridden smut empire.
MindGeek — which has faced scrutiny in recent years for allegedly hosting content involving revenge porn, child sex abuse, and victims of sex-trafficking — is rebranding to the name “Aylo” effectively immediately, the company said.
The “Aylo” name is likely to lead to some head-scratching — but a company spokesperson said the word was chosen specifically because it doesn’t have a meaning and can’t be found in the dictionary.
“We wanted a fresh start, so we opted for a name that gave us that freedom, so that our team and our new owners could define it how we want,” the company said.
Parenting News
Put down your phone! Average parent spends more time on their devices than they do with their kids
NEW YORK — There is no shortage of studies showing the ill effects of screen time on young, developing minds. Yet while many parents set rules in place to limit their kids’ electronics time, most aren’t doing the best job role modeling themselves. According to new research, three out of five American parents admit that they spend more time on their electronic devices than their kids do.
On average, moms and dads spend nearly five hours a day on electronic devices. Sadly, that’s more than the less than four hours they spend on meaningful activities with their kids, according to the survey of 2,000 U.S. parents. Most parents (80%) own three electronic devices or more, with the majority of their kids (81%) owning at least two electronic devices, highlighting the enormous presence of technology in households.
Tim Ballard, the former Homeland Security agent and undercover operative whose experience rescuing child sex trafficking victims inspired the film “Sound of Freedom,” joined Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., Tuesday in demanding the Biden administration find the estimated 85,000 unaccompanied minors who crossed the southern border and remain unaccounted for in the U.S.
At a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Smith announced new legislation dubbed the “Safeguarding Endangered Children, Unaccompanied and at Risk of Exploitation Act of 2023” or as the “SECURE Act of 2023.”
The bill aims to compel the federal government to report on efforts to locate, establish contact with, conduct wellness checks on, and investigate any suspicion of human trafficking related to the approximately 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children released from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody “with whom subsequent contact has been lost.”
Who’s on the other end of the line when you get a scam phone call? Often, it’s a victim of human trafficking whose safety — and perhaps their life — depends on their ability to successfully steal your money. A recent UN report suggests there are hundreds of thousands of trafficking victims forced to work in sweatshops in Southeast Asia devoted to one thing: Stealing money. If they don’t, they go hungry, or they are beaten … or worse.
In other words, there are often victims on both ends of scam phone calls.
Americans report they are inundated with scam phone calls, emails and text messages, and FBI data shows losses are skyrocketing. Crypto scams alone increased more than 125% last year, with $3.3 billion in reported losses. These numbers are so large that they are meaningless to most; and you’ve probably heard before that this or that crime is skyrocketing, so perhaps that alarmist-sounding statement doesn’t penetrate. But let me say this: I spend all week talking to victims of scams and law enforcement officials about tech-based crimes, and by any measure I can observe, there is a very concerning spike in organized online crime.
A recent report published by the United Nations helps explain why.
A Look Back – Children who lost a parent that day share a burden of grief, prying questions and ubiquitous footage of the disaster that killed their parents.
Robyn Higley has always hated September. It’s the month when everything bad happens, when her spirits, generally so bright and bubbly the rest of the year, grow bleak and deflated.
She feels sad in September. Though she doesn’t fully understand why.
988 is now the three-digit dialing code that routes callers to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (or 988 Lifeline). On July 16, 2022, the Lifeline transitioned away from the National Suicide Prevention Line reached through a 10-digit number to the three-digit 988 Lifeline. It is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and administered by Vibrant Emotional Health (Vibrant).
When people call, text, or chat with the 988 Lifeline, they are connected to trained counselors that are part of the existing 988 Lifeline network, made up of over 200 local crisis centers. These counselors are trained to provide free and confidential emotional support and crisis counseling to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress, and connect them to resources. These services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, across the United States.
The previous 988 Lifeline phone number (1-800-273-8255) will always remain available to people in emotional distress or suicidal crisis.
The 988 Lifeline’s network of over 200 crisis centers has been in operation since 2005 and has been proven to be effective. Trained counselors listen, provide support, and connect to resources when appropriate.
Callers who follow the “press 1” prompt are connected to the Veterans Crisis Line. A Spanish Language line is available by pressing 2 when calling 9-8-8, and more than 240 languages are supported through a Tele-Interpreters service. Callers now also have the option of following a “press 3” prompt to be connected to a counselor specifically trained in supporting LGBTQI+ callers.
Numerous studies have shown that callers feel less suicidal, less depressed, less overwhelmed and more hopeful after speaking with a 988 Lifeline counselor.
Apple spent years trying to design a system that would stop the spread of child sexual abuse material on iPhones and iCloud. When the company scrapped it, key members of the team behind the project left and child protection investigators were frustrated. But Apple’s privacy-first approach gained plenty of fans in the process.
Joe Mollick had spent much of his life dreaming of becoming a rich and famous oncologist, a luminary of cancer treatment, the man who would cure the disease for good. It was a quixotic quest for the 60-year-old, one that left him defeated and hopelessly isolated. He turned to pornography to ease his feelings of loneliness. When those feelings became more severe, so did his taste for porn; he began seeking out child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
When the cops first caught Mollick uploading CSAM on a messaging application called Kik in 2019, they searched his electronics and discovered a stash of 2,000 illegal images and videos of children and some 800 files of what a search warrant reviewed by Forbes described as “child erotica.” Investigators found that material had been uploaded and stored in his iCloud account, though Apple hadn’t been the one to notify the police. It was Kik that provided the tip that led to Mollick’s capture and two-year prison sentence. The company was alerted to the images by a Microsoft tool called PhotoDNA, which uses a digital fingerprint to identify known CSAM.
That Apple didn’t flag the illegal material isn’t surprising: Other than its standard scan of outgoing email attachments, the company has long chosen not to screen unencrypted iCloud data for known CSAM. And while it developed a cryptographic system to do just that, Apple abandoned it at the end of 2022, a polarizing move that drew praise from privacy hawks and outrage from child safety advocates. The company framed the controversial decision as reflective of its commitment to privacy—a stance that has earned the world’s richest company plenty of plaudits.
Still, critics say Apple has failed to develop a sustained, successful response to child exploitation materials on its services and fallen far behind competitors in helping police catch the criminals who proliferate it. A Forbes review of some 100 federal cases in which investigators searched Apple technologies, believing they were used in furtherance of child exploitation, found that the company’s systems have been used to store and transmit thousands of items of CSAM between 2014 and 2023. But unlike peers like Google and Meta, which proactively scan their services for such material and provide millions of leads every year to the nonprofit National Center For Missing And Exploited Children (NCMEC) and law enforcement, Apple reports just hundreds despite having hundreds of millions of iCloud users.
Danny Masterson was sentenced Thursday to 30 years to life in prison for raping two women in Los Angeles decades ago.
A jury of seven women and five men in May found the 47-year-old actor guilty of two counts of forcible rape. Both attacks occurred in Masterson’s Hollywood-area home in 2003, when he was at the height of his fame and starring on the Fox network sitcom, “That ’70s Show.”
The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on a final count — an allegation that Masterson also raped a longtime girlfriend — which was dismissed after prosecutors said they would not retry him. Judge Charlaine Olmedo allowed all three women to provide victim impact statements during the sentencing hearing, which was also packed with the actor’s supporters.
“When you raped me, you stole from me,” one of the victims said Thursday. “You are pathetic, disturbed and completely violent. … The world is better off with you in prison.”
After a long struggle, and sticky start, the senate bill calling for harsher penalties for child sex traffickers has cleared its latest hurdle, and is well on its way to becoming one of California’s newest laws.
On Friday, the Assembly Appropriations Committee voted unanimously to pass SB 14 after making amendments to the bill’s language.
In a press conference held Friday afternoon, Senator Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) thanked the millions of Californians who contacted her in regards to the bill to make sure that sex traffickers were “rightfully prosecuted as perpetrators.”
“I want to thank the Assembly Appropriations Committee members who stood today in defense of the victims of child sex trafficking and voted to let SB 14 out of committee. The amendment affirms what is already in statute to ensure victims of human trafficking are protected,” Grove said following the committee meeting.
SB 14 calls for sex trafficking crimes against children to be classified as serious offenses in the State of California and that each offense include a strike under the Three Strikes law. Grove said the focus of the bill is to go after repeat offenders.
According to Grove, the bill has strong bipartisan support with 64 co-authors from both parties and both houses.
Said Grove, “Protecting victims of child sex trafficking should not be a partisan issue. Today is a victory for every survivor. I am confident most members of the Assembly want to vote for this bill, and thanks to today’s vote they will have a chance. However, the fight to make the human trafficking of a child a serious felony is not yet finished, and I urge every Californian to stay engaged until the bill is signed into law.”
Concerning questions and concerns raised regarding the amendments made to the wording of the bill by the Appropriations Committee, Grove said the committee did so to affirm that the victims who are in trafficking situations not be “wrapped up” in the roll and charged as perpetrators.
Said Grove, “That was never the intent of the bill… to have a victim be charged as a criminal.
