A 400-year-old prophecy foretold America’s loss of faith — and its revival



While history suggests that religious zeal often follows and quickly fades after events like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, prophetic visions from more than 400 years ago shine a light on our current situation and offer hope for a sustained faith revival.

Through an Ecuadorian nun, Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, the Virgin Mary — under the title “Our Lady of Good Success” — reputedly foretold with staggering precision the ominous religious landscape of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. However, an immense loss of faith and practice — a mass apostasy — would be followed by a religious restoration.

Mother Mariana’s tale offers wisdom: God has an eternal devotion to us. He is always working, especially when the times are bleakest, and He will triumph.

Born to a Spanish noble family in 1563, Mother Mariana accompanied her religious aunt, Maria, to Quito, Ecuador, at a young age. At 15 years old, Mariana made her vows and joined the Conceptionist Order, of which she would later serve as abbess. Throughout her pious life, she had visions of our Lord, the Virgin Mary, angels, and various saints.

One evening in 1582, while praying before the Blessed Sacrament, Mother Mariana reportedly witnessed a crucified Christ bearing inscriptions related to God’s punishments for the late 20th century due to heresy, blasphemy, and impurity. During the encounter, the Blessed Mother asked the nun — who had been “judged blameless” — whether she would “sacrifice” herself for those sinners, which the nun accepted.

Mother Mariana’s mystic visions spanned decades, and they “tortured” her because of a predicted loss of innocence and modesty by children and women in the decades we are now living in. In these visions, the Virgin Mary consistently expressed her deep sorrow for the “children of these times” — because Satan “will reign” and faith would decay.

She prophesied that heresy would flourish in our times; vocations would be lacking, accompanied by rampant “sexual impropriety”; priests would scandalize the faithful; and the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, marriage, and extreme unction, would be attacked, robbed of meaning, or forgotten. Many “frivolous souls” would be lost in the mayhem.

Despite the numerous grave warnings, the Blessed Mother also offered consolation and encouragement, telling Mother Mariana about the “merciful love of my Son” for the faithful during this period, prophesying the “happy beginning of the complete restoration.”

To spread devotion, Our Lady of Good Success instructed Mother Mariana to commission a statue, which had been “miraculously completed” by the archangels in January 1611, according to legend.

Mother Mariana died at the age of 72 on January 16, 1635. In the ensuing years, the local diocese approved and promoted the apparitions — which are now a worldwide devotion after awareness accelerated due to the accuracy of the predictions. In 1790, Father Manuel Sousa Pereira catalogued the religious nun’s life in “The Admirable Life of Madre Mariana de Jesus Torres,” and in 1986, the Archdiocese of Quito officially opened her cause for canonization.

The accuracy of the prophecies was borne out by the sexual revolution and anti-traditional posture of the 1960s, millions of children dying from abortion, and the clerical sexual abuse scandal, to name a few. From these spewed a myriad of social pathologies that have plagued not only the Catholic Church’s standing as a moral stalwart, but civilization at large. The proof has been, sadly, evident.

Vocations did collapse — as well as widespread religious practice and prayer. Marriage has declined, along with baptisms and the other sacraments. There has been a glaring lack of knowledge about the Eucharist — the source and summit of Christian life. When the basic tenets of faith are misunderstood or ignored entirely, a mass apostasy is inevitable and has taken place in the West, which has affected all Christian denominations.

Consequences beyond the Church

The decline in American religiosity raises even broader concerns for everyone. Religiously unaffiliated residents are less civically engaged than those active in their faith lives and less charitable in terms of monetary donations. As apostasy spreads, civic associations have likewise closed, providing fewer opportunities for neighbors to commune and engage in society.

It is no coincidence, then, that a bevy of social ills are emerging from the lack of social cohesion since the early 2000s, which Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam recognized in his book, “Bowling Alone.” Since then, Americans have experienced a precipitous rise in anxiety and depression, particularly among younger demographics, leading to a pervasive “happiness crisis.” It is no wonder that people are generally despondent or searching for answers.

Increasingly, we are isolated from God, our neighbors, and ourselves.

A ‘Great Awakening’

But in Christ’s parable of the prodigal son, the titular son returned to his father after hitting rock bottom. After the strife of the 20th and early 21st centuries, is a renewal — or “restoration” as Our Lady of Good Success allegedly proclaimed — a possibility? And did we collectively have to hit our lowest point to come back to our senses and God?

The seeds for a 21st-century “Great Awakening” are not entirely improbable. Within the past year, members of Gen Z have flocked to religion more than previous generations, and the rise in religious “nones” — or the unaffiliated — has slowed. U.S. politicians have urged a “spiritual reawakening” and have expressed a desire to “bring God back” into the public square. The Trump administration established the Religious Liberty Commission to reacquaint Americans with “our Nation’s superb experiment in religious freedom in order to preserve it against emerging threats.”

While challenges remain and thousands of churches are set to close, Kirk’s death could be a spark for a surge in religious practice in a nation that has, for the past few decades, jettisoned faith. After all, an overwhelming majority of Americans still believe in God, so there may be a willing audience.

For the faithful, we not only have encouraging signs of a revival, but promises in Scripture. Christ promises to the apostles, and us, that the “gates of the netherworld shall not prevail” against the church. Ultimately, heaven will win — and hell will lose. In the end, God will restore creation, wiping every tear from our eyes, and establish a new heaven and new earth.

RELATED: Charlie Kirk sparks viral Christian revival: ‘I'm going to go take his seat for him’

Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images

Although the apparitions of Our Lady of Good Success have so far proven true, Mother Mariana’s tale offers wisdom: God has an eternal devotion to us. He is always working, especially when the times are bleakest, and He will triumph.

With the recent increase in religious attendance, clamor for God, and discussion of a spiritual renewal in the weeks following Kirk’s death, perhaps a potential “restoration” of sorts — even if short-lived — may be looming on the near horizon. The data and cultural shift should fill us with hope and strengthen our hearts to welcome the influx of weary and inflamed souls longing for peace, meaning, and God.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearReligion and made available via RealClearWire.

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Several Texas school staff members, including superintendent, charged after video captures horrific abuse of special needs children



Earlier this year, Millsap Independent School District in Parker County, Texas, faced a federal lawsuit after allegations surfaced that two staff members — special education teacher Jennifer Dale and paraprofessional Paxton Bean — abused special needs students. The pair have been charged with official oppression; Bean was also hit with an additional felony charge of injury to a child. Millsap ISD Superintendent Mari "Edie" Martin was charged with failure to report and intent to conceal the abuse allegations.

The lawsuit alleges that Dale and Bean physically abused special needs students, particularly a 10-year-old nonverbal autistic boy named Alex Cornelius. Video evidence shows Dale striking at Alex and Bean throwing an object at him, with additional claims of verbal and psychological abuse.

Martin is accused of attempting to cover up the abuse by failing to report it to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services or local law enforcement, as required by law. Martin also reportedly instructed a witness to destroy evidence.

Dale, Bean, and Martin were arrested, indicted, and fired from Millsap ISD. Three other educators, Jami Riggs, Jeannie Bottorff, and Shannon Krause, were also indicted on misdemeanor charges for failure to report child abuse by a professional.

When Sara Gonzales, BlazeTV host of “Come and Take It,” heard the story, all she could think was, “If this had happened to my kid, I would be in jail right now.”

Sara plays the video footage taken by a whistleblower in the classroom that led to the lawsuit. “You're going to want to take your blood pressure medication for this one,” she warns.

In the video, Dale can be seen aggressively taking a swing at Alex. Seconds later, Alex walks over to Bean, who repeatedly hits him with a toy before throwing it at him.

Further, according to the witness who took the damning footage, Dale and Bean “committed mental and verbal abuse against special needs elementary students, which included taunting, mocking, threats, profanity, and extensive timeouts."

According to the probable cause affidavit, Dale and Bean are accused of “locking children in unlit closets for extended periods of time, where they screamed for help and pleaded to be released; assaulting children with their hands and objects and using other forceful measures; and verbal assaults calling the children names, mocking their disabilities, and commenting about their genitals.”

“In one documented incident, one plaintiff's child accused Bean of punching him in the face while confining him in a calm-down room, which resulted in the boy being taken to the school nurse with a ‘gushing nosebleed,”’ Sara reads.

But it gets worse.

“This story ... it's like an onion,” says Sara. “The more layers that you peel away from it, it's like the grosser that it gets.”

For example, the witness took the video evidence straight to the superintendent because the elementary principal of the school where the abuse was taking place, Roxie Carter, happened to be Paxton Bean’s mother. Carter even wrote her daughter a letter of recommendation to help her get another teaching job while the investigation was still pending.

When Superintendent Martin received the evidence, however, she tried to “intimidate the whistleblower into deleting the video," says Sara.

Recorded audio captures Martin saying, “I would like us to take them off your phone. Those are educational records, and I now have them and our investigator now has them, and they're put in a safe file, but I don't want you to walk off with those because those are educational records, OK? So we need to delete them from your phone. ... If you keep them on your phone, your phone likely will be sanctioned for an investigation.”

“Any sort of big, bloated government bureaucracy with way too much money gets corrupted. There are no exceptions. Public school is not an exception,” says Sara, “and that is why you are left with superintendents who want to cover for the teachers rather than actually hold them accountable.”

To hear more of Sara’s commentary and more wild details about the scandal, watch the episode above.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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Supreme Court: Kids deserve protection from porn, period



The Supreme Court last week delivered not just a legal decision but a resounding moral affirmation: Children deserve protection from online pornography.

For decades, I’ve been told that “free speech” includes the right to exploit. I’ve watched Big Porn hide behind the First Amendment like a shield, as if this billion-dollar industry, built on addiction, abuse, and shattered innocence, was a sacred American institution. But on Friday, in upholding Texas’ pornography age-verification law, the court drew a line in the sand.

For children, exposure to pornographic material isn’t a neutral event. It reshapes the brain. It numbs empathy. It seeds confusion, fear, and addiction.

And I say: Thank God.

As the brother of a child survivor of sexual exploitation, I know firsthand the consequences of a culture that normalizes sexual harm. I know what it’s like when an industry like porn sees children as commodities. I’ve seen too many young people stumble into the world of violent, degrading content with nothing more than a click. No gatekeepers. No warnings. No protection.

That ended last week.

Texas’ age-verification law was never about silencing speech. It was about defending the voiceless and restoring the most basic responsibility we have as a society: to guard our children from harm.

That’s why my team at Jaco Booyens Ministries joined this case as a friend of the court. Our team submitted a brief to the Supreme Court that shared the lived experiences of survivors, the neurological science on childhood trauma, and the irrefutable consequences of exposure to online pornography.

As our brief stated in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton: “There is no liberty in trauma. There is no freedom in addiction. When minors are exposed to pornography, they are not exercising constitutional rights, they are being wounded by the unchecked rights of others.”

Still, the porn industry screamed “censorship.” Companies sued, claiming this was a violation of their “rights.” But what about our children’s right not to be harmed? What about the parents fighting to keep predators out of their homes?

The court acknowledged what every honest parent already knows: Access to this kind of content isn’t harmless. It isn’t “education.” It is psychological, emotional, and spiritual violence. During oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett captured the heart of the issue when she asked, “Why should it be so easy for a 12-year-old to access this kind of material online, when we all know it can be incredibly damaging?”

That wasn’t a rhetorical flourish; it was a recognition of truth.

For children, exposure to pornographic material isn’t a neutral event. It reshapes the brain. It numbs empathy. It seeds confusion, fear, and addiction. I can no longer pretend this is just about speech. This is about harm. Real harm. And the court, at long last, chose to see it.

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Photo by Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

I can’t change what happened to my sister. But I can fight to make sure it doesn’t happen to someone else. I can help protect the next generation. I can work to make it harder for exploitation to find its way into our living rooms, our schools, our smartphones. I can help make justice more than just a word. I can help make it action.

To the justices who stood with us: Thank you. You did not bow to corporate pressure. You honored the Constitution as a document of liberty, not license. You remembered that freedom must be rooted in truth, and the truth is that unrestricted pornography destroys lives.

This victory isn’t just for Texas; it’s a win for every child in America. It sends a clear message to every state in this nation: You have the power to protect your children. You can draw the line. You don’t have to wait for permission. And beyond our borders, this ruling sends a powerful global signal: I still believe — and I know many others do too — that children are worth protecting, that their innocence is not up for sale, and their safety is not negotiable.

Let this ruling be a turning point — for our families, for our faith, for our future.

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Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass to California: 'Look what you made us do!'



You’ve probably been watching the riots in Los Angeles.

For about a week now, angry foreign nationals (mostly Mexican), angry legal residents originally from Mexico, and lunatic leftist white American Democrats have been blocking highways, hurtling bricks at police from overpasses, shooting off fireworks into crowds, and setting cars on fire.

Your eyes are lying to you. You don’t see that man waving a Mexican flag while he fires off a bottle rocket into a group of cops.

Why? Because they’re very angry that laws against illegal immigration are being enforced. And they're doing more than "protesting" this — they're actively targeting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers charged with carrying this out.

That’s the purpose of posting the known locations and identities of ICE officers on social media. They want them hurt or even killed.

Agitator Jack Quillin, who was arrested for posting the location of ICE raids live online, is pretending now that he’s sorry, undoubtedly in hopes that his punishment will be light. But you would be a fool if you believed people like this don’t hope to see cops and right-wingers dead.

Nothing to see here

I’ve been watching it all too, but it’s the response of California officials that has me fascinated.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) tells the press that there’s no violence that needs a police response. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D) claims there’s no violence or lawlessness in Los Angeles. Governor Gavin Newsom (D) says that the president sending in the National Guard is what caused the violence.

It all feels so familiar, and the reason why is because I grew up in a home that runs on the same deranged rules that modern American left-wing politics run on. For most of my life, I was under the spell of an important person in my life who behaved the way Gavin Newsom, Maxine Waters, and Karen Bass are behaving.

That person was my mother.

Mental derangement

My mother behaved that way because she had a mental derangement called a Cluster B personality disorder. You know this colloquially as clinical narcissism and clinical levels of emotional reactivity that comes out in screaming outbursts, lies, and blaming other people for what you yourself have done.

My weekly commentary show, "Disaffected," has a thesis: Abuse that starts in the home between spouses, or from parent to child, grows and expands into our public politics.

The narcissistic, deranged mind of my mother (that’s the Cluster B personality) is the same kind of mind that we find in the political and cultural left. Yes, I’m saying that I believe many of these politicians, and their voters, are truly diagnose-ably personality disordered. Yes, I’m saying that this is just “child abuse” and “spousal abuse” scaled up to the public stage.

It’s not that it’s “like” domestic abuse; it is the very same thing.

The real 'gaslighters'

Cause and effect are reversed. Your eyes are lying to you. You don’t see that man waving a Mexican flag while he fires off a bottle rocket into a group of cops. You’re not watching people throw bricks off highway overpasses. Do you understand? You’re crazy if you think you see that, and if it’s happening, people like you made the protesters get violent.

The proper term for these kinds of lies is “gaslighting.”

I know that you’re probably tired of hearing that, and you probably associate it with left-wing complaints. That’s a mistake. Gaslighting is real, and it is effective. It has worked on you many times in your life, I guarantee it.

The left simply reverses the truth — leftists hurt others, then claim to be victims. They lie and distort reality to make other people think that they are crazy, then the leftist accuses the person she bamboozled of “gaslighting” her!

'Mommie Dearest'

I learned about it at home. If you’ve seen the movie "Mommie Dearest," you have a good idea of what kind of childhood I had. We were poor, not rich, and we weren’t famous. But everything else was much the same.

Think back to the scene where Joan Crawford finds her 8-year-old daughter, Christina, playing make-believe in front of Joan’s mirror. Christina imitates her mother at press conferences, addressing her “wonderful fans.”

Joan’s ego is so bruised she starts screaming at her daughter and hacking her hair off. Joan yells, “You vain, spoiled child, trying to find ways to make people look at you. Why are you always looking at yourself in the mirror? Why are you doing that? Tell me!”


'Look what you're making me do'

Joan was projecting her own traits onto her daughter. My mother did the same. When she became frenzied with frustration, she would push me down onto my knees on the dining room floor, commanding me to “humble myself” while she hit me on the face and about the head. As her anger got to a peak of red-faced fury, she would shake me until my head bobbled and scream, “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?”

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AllNikArt/Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images

A longtime babysitter named Theresa was similarly afflicted. Theresa lived down the block, and a bunch of us kids went to her apartment after school to be watched until our parents got home from work. Theresa had a love-hate relationship with children. She liked them enough to babysit and provide us with hundreds of comic books to keep us entertained, but she would lose control when we got too loud.

Maybe we screamed too much playing tag; maybe our feet stepped into the flower bed. Theresa would call us into the living room. She did her hair like Alice the maid from "The Brady Bunch" and wore horn-rimmed glasses with double-knit polyester shorts.

Theresa would have us children sit on the floor before her as she perched on the couch. Looking us in the eye, she’d take the palm of her hands and slap her inner thighs until they turned black and blue.

“You’re working my nerves and making me do this!” she’d yell, slamming her own thighs. “LOOK WHAT YOU’RE MAKING ME DO!”

That’s what Gavin Newsom is doing.

Narcissistic reversal

“Thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of Angelenos who protested peacefully, this situation was winding down and was concentrated in just a few square blocks downtown,” Newsom said in a video posted on X. “But that’s not what Donald Trump wanted. He again chose escalation; he chose more force.”

Translation: WHY IS DONALD TRUMP MAKING THE RIOTERS BE VIOLENT?

That’s what they’re all doing, the Democrats and city leaders blaming Trump, the police, the National Guard, or ICE, for the criminal violence of street thugs.

This is called a “narcissistic reversal.” It’s what my mother did when she blamed me for “hurting” her while she was beating me. It’s what Theresa did when she told 7-year-olds they were forcing her to beat her legs black and blue. It’s what Newsom is doing when he claims that Trump enforcing the law is what’s making illegal aliens and Americans break the law.

The Bible knows this devilish trick. Isaiah 5:20 says, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”

A taste of home

These denials, these reversals of blame, are familiar to me because I was raised from birth in just the kind of environment you see out on the streets and in politicians’ podiums this week. Yes, I am saying that politicians on the left are, in my view, behaving exactly as you would expect from patients with borderline or narcissistic personality disorders (and antisocial PD/sociopathy, too).

It’s all out in the open now. Turn on your TV, open social media, and it’s like watching a screening of "Mommie Dearest" or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest," but it’s all presented to you as if it were perfectly normal.

If you have felt for years that something is really psychologically off about the left, you were right. Maybe this essay has given you a framework that can help you understand what specifically that thing is that’s so “off.” I believe it’s Cluster B psychopathology. Domestic abuse has gone public and feral.

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Macron's office initially denies authenticity of video showing French president's manhandling by his geriatric wife



Video went viral early Monday appearing to show 72-year-old Brigitte Macron manhandling her former student and now husband, French President Emmanuel Macron, just before they deplaned in Hanoi, Vietnam. The president's office initially denied the video's authenticity.

The footage has not only prompted an evolving explanation from the French president but also debate online both over what qualifies as abuse and over the nature of the Macrons' controversial relationship.

In the video, captured by the Associated Press, the 47-year-old president can be seen in the open doorway of the landed plane speaking to his wife. Mrs. Macron seemingly throws her hands into the president's face, impressing upon him a momentary look of shock. Realizing he is in full view of the public below, Mr. Macron smiles, steadies himself, and waves.

After getting his bearings, Mr. Macron turns to exit the plane, offering his elderly wife his arm. She elects instead to rely on the railing, then descends the stairs beside her husband.

'It was a moment of togetherness.'

Macron's office initially denied the authenticity of the images, but when it became clear that denial was a losing strategy, Mr. Macron told reporters that the altercation was all in fun, reported Le Monde.

"My wife and I were squabbling, we were rather joking, and I was taken by surprise,," said Mr. Macron, adding that the physicality was overblown and it has now "become a kind of planetary catastrophe, and some are even coming up with theories."

He suggested further that this was the latest of a number of videos that have been misinterpreted online.

"For three weeks ... there are people who have watched videos and think I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a fight with the Turkish president, and that now I'm having a domestic dispute with my wife," said Macron. "None of these are true."

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Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images

One of the videos to which Mr. Macron was likely referring showed him tucking away a white object while seated next to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz while en route to Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 9. Critics concluded that the white object was a bag of cocaine. French officials suggested it was just a crumpled tissue.

Macron's office said of the incident on the plane in a statement obtained by CNN, "It was a moment when the president and his wife were unwinding one last time before the trip began, playfully teasing each other. It was a moment of togetherness."

'He preferred to spend his time talking with the teachers.'

Even though Mr. Macron and his office ultimately confirmed that the footage was genuine, CNN still insinuated it was being misinterpreted for the purposes of "disinformation."

Some critics online discussed whether the incident was indicative of a toxic or abusive relationship.

Normalcy advocate Robby Starbuck, for instance, suggested that "if you're in a relationship where someone puts hands on you, LEAVE. It's not normal and there's no excuse for it. People who love and respect you don't hit you."

Other critics suggested the incident might be just the latest insight into a relationship that started in 1993 when then-Brigitte Auziere, a 39-year-old high school teacher, fell for a 15-year-old boy who was a classmate of her daughter Laurence. Auziere supervised the drama club the boy was a member of.

Mr. Macron's former sports teacher told Bloomberg, "At 15, Macron had the maturity of a 25-year-old," adding, "He preferred to spend his time talking with the teachers rather than his classmates."

Mrs. Macron's family discovered her affair with the minor in 1994, prompting disgust and fury.

The age of consent in France is 15.

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Behind closed tabs: How the porn industry's profits are built on real-world abuse



Many people mistakenly believe that it’s harmless to watch free pornography online. "It's simply a fantasy," they say.

But a new report released by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation provides the hard proof that the pornography industry has contributed to the global rise in image-based sexual abuse (ISBA), which has serious and traumatic real-world impacts.

Our elected leaders need to act to hold pornography tube sites accountable for the abuses they perpetuate.

IBSA is a rapidly growing form of sexual violence that includes the creation, manipulation, theft, extortion, threatened or actual distribution, or any use of images for sexual purposes without the meaningful consent of the person depicted. IBSA manifests in several forms, including nonconsensual distribution of sexually explicit images or videos, recorded sexual violence, video voyeurism, and nonconsensual creation or distribution of AI-generated forged pornography.

The reality is that porn companies like Pornhub, XVideos, XNXX, and xHamster have built their platforms by allowing, encouraging, and profiting from the distribution of image-based sexual abuse.

The enormous traffic generated by the availability of free pornography videos drives revenue from advertisers and affiliates as well as of “premium content,” such as personalized subscriptions and á la carte purchases. Thus, the internet pornography industry’s profit model is, in part, dependent upon the proliferation of free, user-generated material, which was ushered in by Pornhub, XVideos, and xHamster.

The uncomfortable reality is that this “freemium” model requires vast amounts of video content, so the platforms have become incentivized to allow user uploads without any meaningful age and consent verification for people depicted, even looking the other way when abuse or piracy is reported.

These concerns are not hypothetical: Videos of sexual assault, sex trafficking, and nonconsensual recordings are routinely uploaded to porn sites worldwide.

Take, for example, a women’s university field hockey team that traveled to another university to play a game. The visiting team was directed to a men’s locker room to use before and after the game. While using that locker room, the women were surreptitiously video recorded by a hidden camera that was placed there by a university employee, who then uploaded these videos to Pornhub and xHamster.

An investigation by journalists into XVideos described a video of an unconscious woman being sexually assaulted. In the video, which at the time had 121,000 views, someone left the comment, “I love the fact that she looks so lifeless lol.” At that time, there were also XVideos search categories such as “against her will” and “drugged and f***ed.”

A woman who works as a news anchor sued WCGZ S.R.O (XVideos’ owner) and other tech companies for allegedly using her image for dating and erectile dysfunction ads without her knowledge. The woman learned of the existence of the ads from co-workers. The image of the woman used in the ads was obtained from security camera footage at a convenience store.

Pornography companies are effectively socializing millions, if not billions, to see image-based sexual abuse as normal.

In February 2025, the pornography website XVideos returned 95,680 results for the term “real voyeur”; for the same term, XNXX returned 101,533 videos and an additional 18,800 “gold” videos, which were accessible with payment. Despite “warning messages” on the Pornhub website for some IBSA-related terms, as of February 2025, Pornhub continues to return results for many terms associated with IBSA and pirated material.

The truth is this: Pornhub and the porn industry as a whole continue to socialize their users to view IBSA (whether real or staged) not as abuse but as normative sexual behavior.

Those who are victimized may endure lifelong emotional, physical, and social trauma. A study conducted in Australia reported that one in five persons of 4,274 participants (2,406 female, 1,868 male) had experienced at least one form of IBSA. Among those who had experienced IBSA, 80.8% of women and 72.9% of men reported feeling annoyed, humiliated, depressed, angry, or fearful as a consequence.

In 2017, an online survey of 3,044 individuals conducted in the U.S. reported that compared to people without IBSA victimization, survivors of IBSA had “worse mental health outcomes and higher levels of physiological problems.” Informal online survey data from August 2012 to December 2013 found that 51% of those victimized by IBSA contemplated suicide as a result of their experience.

Once a video is uploaded, it is nearly impossible to get it removed from the platform and from the internet at large.

The recently passed TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed into law by President Trump, criminalizes the act of uploading image-based sexual abuse and mandate its removal within 48 hours. This is a tremendous step forward in confronting IBSA.

But many solutions to confront this abuse are needed, and our elected leaders need to act to hold pornography tube sites accountable for the abuses they perpetuate.

Everyone deserves to live without the fear of their likeness being found on a pornography website.