By Trey Dellinger for WISPOLITICS
When she was 14, Serena K. Fleites was an A student “who had never made out with a boy,” wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Kristof details how a boy Serena had a crush on coaxed her into sending him multiple naked videos of herself, and after someone posted them on Pornhub, classmates mocked her until her “world imploded.” The Times piece describes how Serena tried to overdose and to hang herself, and ultimately, her feelings of worthlessness led her to punish herself by posting even more naked videos of herself on Pornhub. Kristof relates how the Pornhub exposure caused a downward spiral that ended with the former A student living in her car and lamenting that “A whole life can be changed because of one little mistake.”
Serena’s story is only one of thousands of stories of vulnerable children who are victimized by the online porn empire. Sadly, Wisconsin is no exception.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul described the growing problem in a press release last fall, stating that in 2024, the Wisconsin Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force received approximately 11,000 total tips of online child exploitation, up from 7,000 total tips in 2022. Attorney General Kaul’s press release says online threats to kids “can include cyber bullying, exposure to Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), contact from adults looking to obtain CSAM from the child and possessing or distributing CSAM images or videos.”
Wisconsin policymakers have a chance to address this crisis. Passed with bipartisan support, Assembly Bill 105 requires commercial pornographic websites to verify that users are at least age 18 before accessing content that is obscene for children. The bill also forbids publishing or distributing obscene depictions of children online.
