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PETITION: Authorities must shut down Pornhub after showing rape videos of 15-year-old trafficking victim. Sign the petition here.

(Editor’s note: The original version of this article, which was published on or about March 3, 2020, misstated that Stephane Manos and Ouissam Youssef established MindGeek. In fact, Manos and Youssef established a company known as Mansef, the assets of which were sold to Fabian Thylmann, who made them part of a company he owned called Manwin, whose name was later changed to MindGeek.)

March 3, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — It might come as a surprise to Canadian readers of LifeSite but one of the biggest promotors of the porn industry is a company not located in the United States but right here in Canada. Jason Evert, a popular Catholic speaker who has continuously warned about the real harm porn has on people, joined me on this week’s John-Henry Westen Show to discuss the dangers of watching it.

MindGeek.com is a Montreal-based IT company established over a decade ago by student programmers from Concordia University — Stephane Manos and Ouissam Youssef.

Georges Buscemi, president of Campagne Quebéc-Vie, looked into the history of MindGeek and discovered that it essentially founded the online porn industry in the mid 2000s.

“They were able to take an industry that was kind of behind the times technologically and they brought it to the next level,” Buscemi told me on this week’s John-Henry Westen Show. “When YouTube really hit the mainstream, they started PornHub.”

Today, PornHub.com is one of the biggest porn sites in the world, generating over $800 million dollars and millions of views each and every day. 

Buscemi recently went to the MindGeek headquarters, which is located in a multi-cultural neighborhood in Montreal. What he found was a company trying to hide its real self under the mask of professionalism. 

“They want to portray themselves as a run of the mill bland startup tech company and that they're just a bunch of geeks and that they like programing…they want to keep it that way because they don't want anyone to be embarrassed or uncomfortable with the situation.”

Buscemi told me that MindGeek is located in a nondescript building. It’s website is also super chic. In many ways, it’s a perfect symbol of the porn industry — trying to look attractive on the outside but hiding something ugly and evil on the inside.

The real crime of MindGeek, other than rotting the minds and souls of millions, is that they are complicit in broadcasting sex trafficking and rape victims across the internet. They don’t police themselves and don’t follow the laws, Buscemi said. Moreover, politicians aren’t cracking down on them. 

Jason Evert told me about the psychological damage being done to people who consume porn.

“The parts of the brain that are impacted from pornography use are the same as when taking a heroin or cocaine. And so it's not simply a spiritual battle or a, you know, emotional battle or whatever — temptation, lust. It's a physiological thing that we're tapping into here,” he told me on this week’s episode.

Jason is absolutely right. When I think of MindGeek, I’m reminded of when Our Lady of Fatima said more souls go to hell because of sins of the flesh than any other sins. People not just in the United States but also and especially Canada must stand up and call on the authorities to shut down these rotten businesses once and for all. 

The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel and right here on my LifeSite blog.

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John-Henry is the co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com. He and his wife Dianne have eight children and they live in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada.

He has spoken at conferences and retreats, and appeared on radio and television throughout the world. John-Henry founded the Rome Life Forum, an annual strategy meeting for life, faith and family leaders worldwide. He is a board member of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family. He is a consultant to Canada’s largest pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition, and serves on the executive of the Ontario branch of the organization. He has run three times for political office in the province of Ontario representing the Family Coalition Party.

John-Henry earned an MA from the University of Toronto in School and Child Clinical Psychology and an Honours BA from York University in Psychology.