Parents ALERT! Traumatic Tales Of Nigerian Teens Whose Sex Tapes Were Shared Online, Monetised On Porn Sites By Ex-lovers (II)
In this concluding piece of a two-part series, PUNCH correspondent, GODFREY GEORGE, who posed as a teenager interested in filming porn, uncovers some of the players in a booming teen porn industry
Tracing the Uniform Resource Locator of a teenager identified only as Caleb, it showed that he’s a first-year student of the Department of Theatre Arts in one of the universities in the South-South.
Contacted by our correspondent, Caleb lied that he was 24. But it was discovered that he clocked 17 in September 2021 based on a short video he posted for a poetry contest he entered for on campus and the admission form he filled; a copy of which was sighted by our correspondent.
Posing as a potential client interested in him, the reporter inquired to know how Caleb ventured into porn videos. He said he was indirectly introduced to the ‘game’ by a ‘brother’ in his area. He said:
“I saw a video of him touching himself on his phone when I was viewing his gallery, and after persuasion, he told me that he would post it on porn sites and make money, but that it was not for children.”
Caleb said when he got home that day, he got curious and decided to go online to check how one could earn money posting nude pictures and videos on the internet. He recounted:
“I was 15 years old or so and they said I had to be 18. I just searched on how one can earn money posting porn as an amateur and that was it. A lot of options came up. When asked by the site administration how old I was, I said 18 years.
“I was able to start as an amateur before I began to join live chats, but I make sure nobody sees my face. I have been doing it for some time now and I make some money here and there. Anyone who requests that I take the mask off is a bad customer. I will end the chat.’’
After a few days of familiarity, Caleb revealed that he usually opened multiple accounts with different usernames on an x-rated site in case he was found out on one. He added:
“If they block me on one, I open another. I also have a foreign partner who I met online, too. He helps me with transaction issues and takes his cut.”
Caleb even provided a link to one of the videos posted on an x-rated site with the title, ‘Black boy strokes small…,’with over 20,000 views as of April 2, 2022.
Asked how much one can make per video, he said,
“It depends on the terms on the site. On some sites, it is the number of views. For others, it is the returning visitors. Some others take the people who subscribe to your channels and the number of downloads seriously.
These sites, just like most sites, monetise the ads which pop up before or after the video is watched. The major money is from custom clips. My mother is a retired head teacher and will disown me if she finds out. My dad is dead. I am in school and can do whatever I like.’’
Independent investigations by PUNCH showed that another of his solo videos, which he posted on one of his many accounts had over 11,000 views, as of May 12, 2022, and the channel garnered over 6,000 subscribers and hundreds of engagements.
Caleb plans to tackle the addiction with the help of a psychologist contacted by PUNCH. The psychologist said that as of May 2, Caleb had deactivated his accounts from the porn sites and responding to therapy.
Nudes for a fee
Findings show that if one posts videos on the porn site, following their amateur user option, one can make between $150-$200 a day (N62,289.00 – N83,52.00). This increases with the number of subscribers and returning viewers one has. Hosts earn in dollars.
On another porn site, a teenager can become an amateur porn actor by simply standing in front of a camera. According to one of the sex chat apps, one can make a living creating, uploading and selling ‘adult’ videos.
Another online engagement platform originally created for use by creatives to monetise their content has now been sexualised as users can air pornographic content.
A US-based Nigerian tech consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter said in today’s digital age, becoming a full-fledged internet adult performer had never been easier, even for teenagers.
“You will not need an agent and go on a shoot with producers. All you’ll need is confidence, some equipment and a designated spot in your house, apartment, or studio. You will also have complete control over the content you make, and the success and/or failure of your career will depend solely on how you perform.
There is a big clause that one must be an adult, but how do you know one is not when no national document of identification is used to verify any of the claims made by these people? With the way the documents are ‘sold’ in Nigeria, how can you confirm this?
How does one know that this underage person who is being filmed is not coerced into making the video? The loopholes make one understand why this trade has thrived unnoticed for decades.”
Investigations also showed that, as far back as 2007, Nigerian teens’ pornographic content had gained entry online.
Some of these teenagers then, who are now adults, still have the videos of what they did as teenagers online, and the sites are still raking in millions of dollars on profit from the adventures.
A source in one of the x-rated sites, when contacted said before anyone would be allowed access to share contents, a member of staff had to verify their identity to ensure compliance with the law. However, there are hundreds of videos of minors on porn sites.
Awful revelations
In search of those behind the industry where nudity is exchanged for a fee, the reporter, posing as a 16-year-old teenager with the name Bryan, connected with some of the Nigerian hosts with teenage pornographic content.
One, with the username, Sexthem22, was bold enough to leave his phone number on his bio and asked people who wanted to be porn actors to ‘hit him up.’
The reporter called the Nigerian number multiple times before he picked up later in the day and quickly said,
“Please, chat me up on WhatsApp. Thank you,” before he buzzed off.
The reporter chatted thus,
“Hello. My name is Bryan. I saw your contact online and I want to be making porn videos with you. But, I am just 16. Will I be accepted?.”
He said, “Ok. Send your d*ick.”
The reporter stressed that he was only 16 and shy but wanted to be sure he would be accepted into the teen porn creators.
He simply said, “You are welcome.”
Enquiring further, the reporter asked, “Will I be acting with other teenagers or with other mature porn stars?”
He added, “Teenagers.”
“I didn’t know there were many of us out there. I thought I was the only one,” said PUNCH reporter, and he simply replied, “Yeah. It is a free world,” and further requested a picture of Bryan’s manhood. He also asked for a video call to teach the reporter how to masturbate.
“This is simple. I didn’t ask you to show your face. Just to call you so that you can see my manhood and I will see your own too. Simple. Forget about shy (sic). We are in a free world,” he stated.
When this reporter joined the video call, Sexthem22 had his manhood in full glare and requested Bryan to do whatever he did.
Asked how much he would be paid after posting the video, he told the reporter, “Free for a start.” He further told him that he would have sexual relations with male teens.
The reporter traced the number to a user in one of the south-western states.
Another porn video host with the name, Olusegun A, when contacted by the reporter who posed this time as a 16-year-old young girl, Timi, asked to know where to meet with her.
“Good afternoon. My name is Timi. I saw your profile on a porn site and I want us to make a video together but I am only 16 years old,’’ the repoter said.
“Where do you live? I am in Lagos. I want to know your location,” he replied.
The number was traced to the Oworonshoki community in Lagos, through the help of the tech experts engaged for the report.
These are only two of the many cyber sex predators who prey on innocent teenagers and they are on the prowl.
Role of social media
On a micro-chatting app, there is a regular status option where one can share texts, pictures and videos on one’s device gallery with the contacts saved on both users’ ends.
This time, the user intentionally uses it either to create awareness, drive traffic to a site or business and/or for viewing sexually-explicit content, which is always the case, most of the time.
It has become the fastest channel through which leaked child or teen porn can be viewed, shared and screenshot to a host of hundreds of users as long as their contacts are saved on the host’s mobile device.
The reporter joined at least 12 of the TV platforms notorious for sharing teen porn and from the number of views, posted by the administrator, on one occasion, over 1600 people on an average viewed a particular content. Some of the TVs require fees to join while others do not.
On one of the platforms, there is a term and agreement which read,
“By logging on and viewing any part of the website, I will not hold the website’s owners or its employees responsible for any materials located on the website.”
Proliferation of child porn
A 2021 transparency report by Comparitech, one of the world-leading tech analytics platforms, which reviewed seven of the biggest social networks to find out how prevalent child abuse is on their platforms, discovered that children below age 10 accounted for 22 per cent of sexual content on the Internet.
The reports typically include content removals, which are broken down into various categories, ranging from child nudity, abuse to sexual exploitation.
The report read in part,
“Tech companies reported over 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused—more than double what they found the previous year. Children over 10 years and younger account for 22 per cent of online obscene-content consumption in the 18-years-old-and-under category.’’
Child pornography and the law
Child pornography as defined by the United Nations International Children Education Fund is “a pornography as any representation, by whatever means, of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes.”
Nigeria is a signatory to several international legal instruments which prohibit the involvement of children in pornography.
One of such instruments is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, domesticated in 27 out of the 36 states in the country. Child pornography is illegal in Nigeria as it is criminalised in the act.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child consists of Articles that set out children’s rights and how governments should work together to make them available to all children.
Some researchers categorise the convention broadly into survival rights, development rights, protection rights and participation rights.
To further protect the child and also cover the lacuna created by the United Nations Convention, the African community through the AU adopted the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child which shares the key principles of non-discrimination, the best interests of the child, children’s participation and the survival and development of the child, protection of the girl child from harmful cultural practices such as child marriage.
Similarly, the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography was adopted. This is a protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and requires parties to prohibit the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.
The protocol provides definitions for the offences of child pornography. It also creates obligations on governments to criminalise and punish activities related to this offence. It requires punishment not only for those offering or delivering children for the purposes of sexual exploitation, transfer of organs, or children for profit or forced labour, but also for anyone accepting the child for the activities.
The convention prohibits the use of a child for prostitution or pornography of any representation, by whatever means, of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a child or primarily sexual purposes.
It also prohibits the use of a child in sexual activities for remuneration or any other form of consideration.
The Cybercrime Act defines child pornography as “any pornographic material that visually depicts a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct; or depicts a person appearing to be a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct; or depicts realistic images representing a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.’’
The Act defines a child to be a person below the age of 18.
In another research, titled, ‘Child Sexual Abuse Material: Model Legislation and Global Review,’ published in 2018 by the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, “Child pornography has been the number one child exploitation offence since the early 2000s while numbers measuring the usage of illegal child pornography are difficult to assess, some have placed the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet to be a $20 black market globally.
“Most of the children involved in prostitution and pornography are girls, all member countries of the UN have committed to prohibiting child prostitution and pornography, either under the Convention on the Rights of the Child or the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.”
One of the tech experts who earlier spoke to PUNCH, said,
“A second way of making money on the porn sites involves uploading videos to and from several adult websites, then putting in one’s domain name and having the viewer continue to one’s site to watch the video in full.’’
Stakeholders proffer solutions
An early childhood consultant, Mrs Chidinma Abiakalam, urged parents to create an enabling environment for children to comfortably speak to them about sexual abuse or episodes of revenge porn.
She stated that parents and teachers could make it easy for their children or wards to open up to them about a leaked sex tape.
Abiakalam stated,
“It’s time to start off by having that kind of relationship where children can tell them anything. There is a concept called psychological safety. This is where someone feels comfortable telling another person anything and is not afraid of being ridiculed, scolded, punished or embarrassed because of a mistake they made.
“Parents and teachers must create an environment that makes it easy for a child to have conversations like that about themselves and their friends, the difficulties they are going through and all the things they have done without being afraid that they are going to be punished.
“However, unfortunately, what we find, most times, is that the environments are not there. Children are already afraid of their parents and their teachers so they do not see these things because, somehow, they feel they are going to be blamed for the misfortune.
“Parents have to know that in the process of raising children, they can make mistakes. They should bring empathy to raising the children. There should be better communication which can only be achieved when parents make themselves available to their children. They must be physically and emotionally available to their children.’’
She advised underage children whose porn tapes were on the internet to confide in a trusted adult who could assist to pull them down and help with rehabilitation and therapy.
Also, a human rights lawyer, Mr Festus Ogun, described Nigeria as a country known for its ‘sufficient laws,’ but insufficient implementations make a mockery of the entire judicial process.
He urged the government to be more interested in the protection of the child from sexual abuse. Ogun stated,
“We have laws that sufficiently criminalise the circulation and reception of child or teenage porn. Specifically, section 24 of the Cybercrimes Act, 2015 criminalises child and teen porn.
“However, the issues are not about the lack or inadequacy of laws. The Nigerian authorities are not committed to enforcing and executing these laws. Clearly, they do not prioritise the rights, protection and welfare of the children. I’m hopeful that this narrative will change overtime.”
Another lawyer, Selena Onuoha, said that it was sad that till date Nigeria had yet to fix child pornography and the welfare of the child.
She urged the Federal Government to prosecute perpetrators of the crime and make them serve some jail time as stipulated in the Child Rights Act and Cyber Crime Laws.
“Even if the parents would take the bulk of the blame, the law should take its course on those evil men and women who are perpetrators of the crime. When one of them is used as an example, the rest would learn a lesson or two,’’
she stated.
Also reacting, a psychologist and mental health officer, Women and Community Livelihood Foundation, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Mr Usen Essien, advised parents and guardians to be more close to their kids to avoid creating a vacuum that may lead them to seek external validation.
He also stated that children who had undergone traumatic experiences should undergo therapy to heal from the accumulated psychological torture.
Essien said,
“Many adolescents suffer emotional and intimacy deficits. Parents tend to be so committed to pursuing life’s goals that an emotional gap is created that sometimes, only social media activities could feel it.
“This is particular with children who had a great bonding with parents when they were much younger. This gap created by emotional distance needs to be fed and readily available.
“These children can also be sent to therapy for assessment and intervention. They need to be helped by professionals to go through the phase and be emotionally and mentally sound adults.”
Experts knock parents, govt
A retired professor of sociology at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Adetanwa Odebiyi, blamed parents for the moral decadence in society.
She said,
“How the children got to that stage is the fault of the parents. Parents now are more concerned with making money than taking care of their children. The children don’t have quality time with their parents so they have enough time to be influenced by others.
“It is what they learnt from their peers that they act out. When they begin to watch pornography at a young age, they would find nothing wrong in creating such content for public consumption. They know their parents won’t be back till evening so they can go anywhere, do whatever they want and return without their parents knowing.”
Commenting on the kind of help working-class parents should seek to achieve quality parenting, Odebiyi said that using home helps could worsen matters.
He stated,
“If they are not openly watching pornography in front of the kids, they are using the children to practice what they have seen in the videos. Until parents become more available for their children, this problem would worsen.’’
She further said that children should not be given unrestricted access to mobiles. She added:
“If they have anything they need the internet for, they should use their parents’ phones or a central system where they can be monitored.”
On his part, another sociologist at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State, Prof. Iheriohanma Ekeoma, who blamed parents for the situation, said society had become too liberalised in raising kids, thereby relegating morality to the background.
Ekeoma added,
“We have liberalised society, where everything is now free. Everyone is left on their own and free to do whatever they want to do. This is why culture has decayed. No person has any cultural roots any longer.
“Parental care and tutelage have dissipated. I use the word because most parents, because of the hardship in the economy, are too busy making money. Some parents are so ignorant that they let their children follow others to do whatever they are doing.
“There is also the issue of peer group influence. Any child that is not exposed or has no sense of corruption or immorality cannot on their own start thinking of how to perform immorality. There must be a link to their thoughts.’’
We’re committed to tackling the problem
–Censors board
The Executive Director, National Film and Video Censors Board, Adebayo Thomas, speaking to PUNCH, said the board was doing its best and committed to more collaborations with parents, guardians and other stakeholders to tackle the menace.
He said,
“Many the so-called blogs and platforms are not registered. We created another monitoring team to look into such things so that we can get it through the faces of those involved in the porn videos so that we can make arrests.
We are equally discussing with the National Assembly to bring Google into the conversation. Google owns Youtube and they are mostly concerned with the issues. They have a structure here. We have invited them to discuss that when something like that pops up on their end, they won’t let it go up on the site.’’
Thomas stated that they had engagements with the stakeholders in the film industry in the six geo-political zones and met with the Film-makers Professional Association on how to tackle the menace.
He said,
“The thing we can do is for all of us to be on the lookout to curb the issue before they get out of hand. Parents and other stakeholders must come together and work with us by reporting it to us.
We can go the extra mile to get the sex videos down. We would appreciate it if reports are being sent to us for us to work on them. Technology is difficult for us to monitor but we must continue to try our best.”
Perpetrators risk 10 years for child porn –Police
In their reaction, the police noted that child porn was an abnormality, a taboo and sin criminalised by many laws and conventions both domestically and internationally.
Speaking through the Force Spokesperson, Muyiwa Adejobi, said,
“It is a crime that is not welcomed morally, legally and religiously. The police, a federal institution, saddled with the mandate of enforcing orders and apprehension of offenders among others by the grand norm of Nigeria and other laws, have been religiously carrying out these mandates and will never relent in doing so.
“Section 14 of the Cybercrime Act of 2015 criminalises production, offering or making available, distributing or transmitting, procuring for self or others, possessing child pornography and prescribes imprisonment of 10 years and above or not less than five years and fine of N20m or not less than N10m or both.
“Also, engaging in a sex act with a child either by coercion, including the use of force, threats and so on, attracts imprisonment not less than 10 years and fine not less than N15m or both. For the avoidance of doubt, a child means any person that has not attained the age of 18 years or less.”
He said the Force has officers in charge of monitoring the internet for any content that depicts child pornography to ensure its perpetrators face the wrath of the law.
Adejobi stated,
“The IGP has also reorganised the Nigeria Police CyberCrime Unit, to take charge of any Internet or cyber-related offences; and the unit has embarked on many investigations and prosecutions of offenders which will be made public henceforth.’’