On Tuesday, Oct. 8, the 5C chapter of the World Without Exploitation Youth Coalition (WWE Youth) hosted a talk at Pomona College’s Hive titled “Pornography: Sexual Exploitation in the Digital World.” The event featured Helen Taylor, vice president of Exodus Cry, who discussed the impact of the porn industry and shared insights from her work with both survivors and industry executives.
Exodus Cry is a nonprofit organization that aims to end sex trafficking and provide support and empowerment to survivors. Taylor, who is from England but currently resides in Los Angeles, became involved with combating sex trafficking in 2007 and later joined Exodus Cry in 2013.
Taylor began the talk by recounting how she first grasped the international scope of sex trafficking when she was 16 and still living in London, after witnessing a young woman being exploited in prostitution. This experience drove her to get involved with anti-sexual exploitation movements.
“I realized this issue is the thing I’m most passionate about,” Taylor said. “I want to dedicate the rest of my life as long as trafficking and exploitation exist on the planet. If there’s a place for me in this movement, I want to be serving and helping combat this issue.”
After university, Taylor earned a diploma in art therapy and took up work with an organization in Cambodia supporting trafficking survivors, particularly women who were being exploited in brothels. Taylor would talk to the women workers at a brothel around the corner from where she was living and connect them with resources.
After returning to London, Taylor met a representative from Exodus Cry who invited her to join their outreach team. Inspired by their mission, she accepted the offer and became part of the organization’s efforts to combat human trafficking. Taylor said her experiences in Cambodia inspired her to help establish Exodus Cry’s Outreach Program, which aims to connect women in the sex industry with the organization’s resources.
“If there was a situation where they were forced into the industry or didn’t want to be there, we wanted to make sure they had sure they had an ally, someone who they could really trust to help them escape their trafficker or their pimp or just help get them connected to a healthy support system,” Taylor said.
Taylor then discussed Exodus Cry’s ongoing and previous efforts, referencing the case of a 15-year-old Florida girl who went missing in December 2018 and was sexually exploited by her kidnappers, who later uploaded videos of her sexual abuse to porn websites such as Pornhub. She emphasized that this incident and others motivated Exodus Cry to examine the regulatory processes behind who is permitted to upload videos on pornography websites.
“Things have changed now, but only four years ago, pornography websites’ process for moderating uploaded videos for illegal content was extremely flawed, and it’s no surprise that a human trafficker was able to upload videos of an underage girl who had not given her consent onto this website,” Taylor said.
Taylor and Exodus Cry’s campaigns call for more regulation surrounding age verification, specifically for the entry to pornography to be raised from 18 to 21.
She said the case involving the underage girl is what motivated Exodus Cry to take action, including protesting outside Pornhub’s headquarters and working with New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof to publish an exposé on the controversial adult video website. According to Taylor, the article’s release is what eventually led Pornhub to delete the majority of its content.
Taylor proceeded to talk about Exodus Cry’s 10-year project, a documentary called “Beyond Fantasy,” for which Exodus Cry members went undercover to expose the darker side of the pornography industry. Taylor said the practices that they discovered after talking extensively to pornography film directors were beyond disturbing.
“We were shocked by the extremely unethical practices of the way that girls were coerced into doing certain things,” Taylor said. She explained, for example, how some of the girls were demanded to perform sex acts that they had not originally agreed to do.
Taylor transitioned into detailing her encounter with a well-known pornography director and how she helped convince them to quit the industry. Her relationship with the former director has persisted to this day, and they even recently traveled together to Washington D.C., meeting with politicians to create policies that would increase age restrictions on pornographic content to 21 years old.
Taylor concluded with some insight into the problems in “legal” pornography, which she said exploits vulnerable people who would probably choose to work elsewhere if they had the choice.
“Even if it’s technically legal, there are lots of issues that happen behind the scenes, agreements that are manipulated by the people in power directing the scenes and manipulation of emotions, too,” Taylor said.
Around 10 minutes were left at the end of the talk for questions. Students asked a range of questions about topics ranging from the romanticization of sex work on social media to Taylor’s experience meeting with pornography industry executives.
Event attendee Kiegan Ralls SC ’28 commented on the empowering nature of Taylor’s talk.
“It was inspiring to hear how much positive change she has brought to not only the pornography industry but to the individual lives of people who have been affected,” Ralls said.
Dahlia Locke PO ’25, one of the WWE Youth Club leaders and an organizer of the event, said she hoped people left the talk being more critical of the sex work industry as a whole.
“I think we don’t realize the impact that the sex trade has on our individual relationships whether that be sexual, romantic or just friendships,” Locke said. “It seeps into everything. It affects how we see ourselves, the way we view our own sexualities, and the way we treat or, for the worst, objectify or exploit other people.”
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