GAFFNEY, S.C. — Videos of female field hockey players showering and changing clothes inside a locker room at a South Carolina college that were posted to Pornhub.com and xHamster.com have spurred a new lawsuit.
Nine women, all named as Jane Does in the complaint, have filed a claim at Spartanburg federal court in South Carolina against Limestone College; Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek Holding USA Inc.; and Hammy Media Ltd., xHamster’s corporate, after a college athletic director allegedly secretly recorded the women in all stages of undress and then posted the video footage of them onto the websites.
The suit alleges that the school director at center of the case, Collins Murphy, secretly recorded the women between September 2012 and October 2013. Six years later the videos were uploaded to the sites.
In the suit, the nine women claim Limestone College failed to reasonably investigate Murphy despite similar sexual allegations being made against him at his hiring.
The suit also claims that Pornhub and xHamster’s “deliberate motivation” to capitalize on the “creation of sexually lewd content for financial gain … resulted in the surreptitious filming of nine innocent girls who can never regain their innocence nor their peace of mind as naked images of them are now available on the Internet.”
Limestone, Pornhub and xHamster are jointly and severally liable to the nine Jane Does for their injuries and damages, according to the suit, which makes claims of emotional distress and pain and suffering and seeks unspecified actual, punitive and special damages.
The lawsuit, filed at the beginning of the pandemic in March, said that Pornhub and xHamster were both notified through “several” takedown notices by the women that they did not consent to be filmed in content presented on their sites.
“Upon information and belief, like defendant Pornhub, defendant xHamster endorses, coordinates and participates in the creation of lewd sexual content by monetizing it through ad revenue payments made to those who have conspired with them,” the suit said.
“Despite these takedown notices, which gave defendant Pornhub and defendant xHamster adequate notice of apparent issues involving their content, [the websites] took no steps to mitigate the exposure of women even though they knew or should have known that the content they were being provided was filmed surreptitiously and without consent.”
Further, the suit said that Pornhub and xHamster made no further efforts to monitor uploads onto their websites despite several takedown notices they received. The Does also charge that the sites invite “sexually deviant media under the names ‘spy cam’ or ‘hidden cam’” without check.
“By actively ignoring the trend that such takedown notices made aware to them, and by continuing to endorse and encourage the creation of such surreptitious sexual content, defendant Pornhub and defendant xHamster enabled the plaintiffs to be harmed by Murphy,” the suit said.
“But for the defendants’ monetization of the creation of ‘homemade/ spy cam’ style lewd content, such content would likely have not been so heavily sought after.”
AVN calls to MindGeek and Hammy Media for comment went unreturned by post time.
In addition to the civil suit, the Gaffney Police Department has launched a criminal investigation into the recordings allegedly made by Murphy. That probe is ongoing.
