Young women are still vulnerable and targets for abuse

Pornhub investigation shows severity of problem

Abuse is not new, especially when fame and fortune are involved. What’s changed is that it’s finally being seen. Caught on camera. Captured in texts. Uploaded in stories. Women are documenting their abuse, but not always surviving the backlash. The message remains the same: Stay quiet or lose everything. Play along, and maybe you survive.

Consider this: According to the CDC, 1 in 4 U.S. women experience severe intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Among teen girls, the numbers are even more alarming. A 2023 CDC report found that nearly 1 in 3 high school girls seriously considered suicide in the past year — a nearly 60% increase over the past decade.

Nearly 1 in 5 girls reported being victims of sexual violence. These are not just numbers. These are our daughters. Our nieces. Our students.

In another troubling development, Pornhub is facing mounting legal pressure in at least 17 states — including my home state of Virginia — for allegedly failing to verify the age and consent of people in its videos. For years, the platform allegedly profited by featuring girls — some of them minors — who were trafficked, coerced or assaulted. :awsuits say the girls’ pain was packaged and streamed to millions without accountability or their consent.

Credit: handout

Credit: handout

In 2020, a New York Times investigative column said Pornhub was including videos of child sexual abuse, rape and non-consensual acts.

A study by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation found the platform lacked basic safeguards, like requiring verification of age or consent. Only after immense public pressure and corporate fallout did the site begin removing millions of unverified videos. But the damage was already done. We should be asking why it was allowed to happen in the first place.

Credit: NYT

Credit: NYT

How women can find their voice

As a former college professor and speaker, I’ve spent years staying close to the next generation of women. I ask them what inspires them, what troubles them and what defines their sense of worth. Not long ago, a friend’s daughter asked me if I’d ever heard of an influencer named Sophia Rain. I hadn’t. I wish I still hadn’t. Rain is a young woman with a wildly popular OnlyFans account who brags online about having had more than 1,000 sexual partners. She is idolized by some and dismissed by others. But the deeper question is: How did we get here?

This isn’t about shame. It’s about systems. We’ve created a culture where young women are told their value lies in their looks, their followers and their access to male-dominated spaces. A world where sexual exploitation is normalized, and silence is incentivized.

We’ve failed to protect girls. And we’ve let entire industries — entertainment, tech, porn, even education — profit from their harm.

More than a decade ago, I wrote “The Woman Code” to help women find their voice, their value and their worth. I never imagined it would feel more urgent now than it did then. But here we are.

That book wasn’t just a collection of affirmations. It was a warning and a blueprint. A warning about defining yourself by what others want from you instead of you knowing your value and worth, first. A blueprint for living by a different code — one rooted in respect, boundaries, faith and truth.

Here are just a few of those codes:

We have a responsibility — all of us — to raise the standard. Parents. Teachers. Lawmakers. Artists. Platforms. Women. Men. This culture of silence and complicity must end. And it starts by believing women, protecting girls and holding the powerful accountable.

We don’t need more slogans. We need safeguards. We need to give our girls language, tools, courage and community. We need to show them their value isn’t measured in followers, fame or access to a man’s world.

Their value is in who they are. And always has been.