An American woman who claims recordings of her being sexually abused appeared on video sharing sites associated with PornHub wants to bring a damages action before the Irish courts.
The woman, who lives in the United States, claims she was drugged and raped by a man when she was a minor.
She claims her abuser recorded what happened and posted the imagery online.
It is alleged that videos of her abuse were published and distributed on various adult video-sharing websites owned by an international group of companies that own, control and manage internet pornography websites including PornHub, which it is estimated averages more than 110 million hits a day.
The woman has brought proceedings before the US courts, against various parties within the MindGeek, (which has recently changed its name to AYLO) group of companies.
MindGeek was PornHub’s parent before the name change.
In correspondence from a subsidiary of MindGeek, all of the woman’s allegations of wrongdoing by the group are denied.
In her damages claim before the US courts she alleges she has been victimised and exploited by the defendants, who she says used the abusive material for profit. The woman claims the videos of her were made available for viewing on the defendants’ websites in violation of US laws.
Due to the international structure of the defendant group, the woman wants to bring parallel proceedings before the Irish courts.
The defendants in the Irish action include AYLO Billing Limited, Mirmay Limited, Nutaku Publishing Limited, Appatomic Limited, and Liquidum Limited, which all have a registered address at The Black Church, St Mary’s Place, Dublin 7.
Other defendants in her proceedings are MG Freesites Limited, MG Freesites II Limited, AYLO Premium Ltd, MG Social Ltd, MG CY Holdings Limited with registered address in Cyprus California registered Mindgeek USA Incorporated and Mindgeek SARL, which is registered in Luxembourg.
The woman wishes to bring before the Irish courts the woman seeks various orders including damages including aggravated and exemplary damages for what she claims is the defendants breach of duty, and breaches of General Data Protection Regulation, conspiracy and her right to privacy.
She wants an order directing the defendants to identify and remove images of child sexual abuse from the websites, and the identities of users who have uploaded the images.
She further intends to seek an order directing the defendants to preserve all assets and cash reserves in Ireland below an amount of US$630 million pending the outcome of the actions in Ireland and the US.
In a preliminary application before Mr Justice Mark Sanfey on Thursday, the woman’s lawyers asked for permission to grant her anonymity in the proceedings.
Represented by Jarlath Ryan BL, the court heard the woman fears for her safety and believes her life might be at risk by the parties who allegedly abused her if her identity was to be made public.
Counsel asked that the woman be given permission to be allowed to formally bring her action under the pseudonym ‘Jane Doe’.
The court also heard that the woman feared that if her identity became known she could become stigmatised resulting in difficulties with her family, friends, employer, work colleagues and the community in general.
Mr Justice Sanfey said that while justice should be administered in public he was satisfied that given the circumstances of this “unusual case” the court had “an inherent jurisdiction to grant the anonymity order sought”.
He agreed with counsel that the defendants would not be prejudiced by the anonymisation of the woman.
The woman, he said, can proceed to bring the proceedings under the pseudonym ‘Jane Doe.’ the judge concluded.