Appeals court revives child sex abuse victim’s lawsuit against Xvideos
An appeals court has allowed a lawsuit filed by a child sex trafficking victim against prominent pornography website XVideos and its parent company WebGroup Czech Republic to proceed, overturning a lower court ruling.
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit released a unanimous ruling on Tuesday in the case of Jane Doe v. WebGroup Czech Republic et al in which they reversed and vacated a district court decision in favor of pornography site and remanded back to the lower court for additional proceedings.
Circuit Judge Daniel P. Collins, a Trump appointee, authored the panel opinion, rejecting the lower court’s conclusion that it lacked “personal jurisdiction” to oversee the case against the Czech Republic-based entities.
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Collins noted that while the foreign entities were based in the Czech Republic, their online content was clearly aimed at the United States, making them liable for any potential harm.
“For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that Plaintiff sufficiently established a prima facie case for exercising personal jurisdiction over WGCZ and [NKL Associates], and those defendants failed to show that the exercise of such jurisdiction would be unreasonable,” wrote Collins.
“Because, as we explained earlier, the district court dismissed the remaining nine Foreign Defendants solely on the ground that there was no personal jurisdiction over WGCZ and NKL, we vacate the dismissal of those additional defendants.”
The panel sent the case back to the district level, instructing the lower court to “address the remaining unresolved issues concerning whether personal jurisdiction may be asserted against those additional defendants.”
Dani Pinter, senior legal counsel with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which is helping to represent the plaintiff, said in a statement released Wednesday that the ruling “will likely have a significant impact across the United States for survivors.”
“This decision ensures that foreign websites cannot avoid accountability in the United States, on jurisdictional grounds, when they target the U.S. market and profit from child sexual abuse material of U.S. children,” stated Pinter.
“We are grateful that the court ruled for this courageous plaintiff, as it moves her one more step closer to justice.”
In March 2021, the unnamed plaintiff filed a class action suit against several individuals and entities both based overseas and in the United States, alleging, among other things, that they had allowed videos of her sexual exploitation as a child to be distributed online.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for Central California, the suit argues that Doe was featured in videos of childhood sexual abuse that were sold, published and distributed on sites operated by XVideos.
“Neither XVideos, nor any other website, owned or operated by WGCZ Defendants undertook any measure to verify Jane Doe’s identity or age,” argued the lawsuit.
“As a result, child sex abuse material (‘CSAM’) depicting Jane Doe was distributed broadly throughout the world on Defendants’ internet websites.”
