Netflix’s “Money Shot: The Pornhub Story” is a documentary that sheds light on the underbelly of the adult entertainment sector. It can only be characterised as intriguing and menacing. This is due to the fact that it examines not just the development of the audio-video platform in question but also how it effectively facilitated sex trafficking, sexual assault, and explicit abuse for almost a decade. Serena Fleites is one of individuals whose experiences have been highlighted in this way, so if you want to know more about her, her ordeal, and her present situation, we’ve got you covered.
Who is Serena Fleites?
Serena’s entire world practically turned upside down back in 2014, even though she was just in the eighth grade and frequently performed pretty well in her local Bakersfield, California school. The truth is that the 14-year-old had just started seeing a male who was one year older and on whom she supposedly had a crush, only for him to demand that she transmit a video of herself undressed shortly after. According to her so-called boyfriend, she shouldn’t have any trouble making such intimate, graphic clips for him if they were indeed dating and she truly loved him as she claimed.
Serena complied as a result, leading him to ask for more and more recordings as the days went by, making her feel reluctance and complete flattery at the same time, in accordance with her own account. She did not, however, take into account the possibility that these films would be shared among the male students at her school and eventually end up on websites like Pornhub, which is regrettably what happened. The teen once described a small portion of the abuse she later had to endure: “A lot of individuals in the grades above me — usually boys — they would try to harass me and blackmail me.
“They would say if I didn’t do something with them or I didn’t send them more movies…, they would send [old ones] to my family: my grandma, my mom, my sisters, and my brother,” Serena continued. Once the news spread, the boy she had been seeing was really suspended, but she still made the decision to change schools because she was unable to attend any classes at the first because of fear and shame. But regrettably, reports about her clips spread to this new location as well, nearly pushing her to quit out after her attempts to start over and have the film removed from Porhub were unsuccessful.
When Serena first contacted Pornhub, she admittedly pretended to be her mother and said the tape was obviously child pornography. Yet, it took them at least a week or two to answer. Even if they did eventually take it down, so many users had already downloaded the entire thing at this time that it was back up on the site within days, and this kept happening over and over again. The worst part, however, is that Serena truly has a hormone problem that causes her to age slowly; as a result, although she may have been 14 in the clips, it was clear that she appeared to be no older than 9 or 10.
Where is Serena Fleites Now?
Serena’s anxiety, sadness, and suicidal thoughts regrettably escalated to levels she could never have imagined as a result of this entire experience, which was so intensely traumatising. She once ingested every antidepressant pill she could find, attempted to hang herself in the bathroom, and even cut herself deeply, but happily, emergency personnel were always on the scene in time to save her. Yet, none of it prevented her downhill spiral in any manner, shape, or form, leading to the teen’s dropout status, homelessness, and opioid and meth addiction without any sense of support or self-care.
Serena admittedly started selling naked pictures and videos of herself on Craigslist as she thought it was a good way to punish herself because she had to find a means to support her drug habit. She believed that because she had put herself in this predicament and everyone had already seen her body, she was no longer deserving of anything. In actuality, she may have been naive, but it wasn’t her fault.
We’re glad to inform that Serena was able to quit using drugs when she was 18 years old, and that after the publication of her New York Times story in early December 2020, she felt inspired to advocate for herself. She then called attorney Michael Bowe and promptly launched a complaint against Pornhub with 33 other girls and women on grounds of racketeering, trafficking, etc. However, recently, due to the number of Jane Doe’s in the case, she is now the only Plaintiff against both Pornhub and Visa.
Serena alleges that Visa deliberately planned with Pornhub’s parent firm MindGeek to profit greatly from footage of her assault by processing revenue from adverts on the sexual website. After the New York Times op-ed, a lot of money was received for the aspiring vet tech through a GoFundMe, allowing her to move into a long-term hotel room with her dogs. She appears to still be there now while making every effort to move past the past, seek justice, and eventually realise her ambitions.
