(NewsNation) — More than one hundred nonconsensual and secretly filmed sexual videos of Navy service members stationed at a base in Guam were uploaded to the pornographic website Pornhub in 2020, according to recently unsealed court documents reviewed by NewsNation.
The Navy opened an investigation into the uploads in early January 2020 after becoming aware of 102 videos — some that included names and rankings of multiple service members — posted to the adult site, states a federal search warrant application unsealed earlier this month in the District Court of Guam.
Those videos were uploaded by an account with the username “playguy148” and appeared to have been shot in the men’s restroom of the Liberty Center aboard Naval Base Guam and other Navy vessels, court records claim.
“Many of the videos — which included audio — appeared to depict various U.S. military members masturbating in bathroom stalls to pornographic materials viewed on electronic devices,” the warrant application stated.
The videos were “filmed either above, below, or through holes in the wall of the bathroom stalls,” and investigators were able to determine that “two primary Guam-based United States Naval commands contained the greatest number of identifiable victims: the USS Emory S. Land and the USS Frank Cable.”
Both the Land and Cable have mixed-gender crews of about 900 sailors and 150 civilians, Military.com reported.
The Office of the United States Attorney did not immediately return a request for comment by NewsNation.
Navy investigators contacted Pornhub within days of discovering the content in 2020, and the company took the videos down, court records showed.
The warrant stated that there was probable cause that the behavior violated federal laws against video voyeurism and illegal interception of communications.
Investigators then subpoenaed the company to obtain “subscriber information” into the account that posted the videos to find out who was behind the surreptitious recordings, records say.
Pornhub provided the details of the account holder under the subpoena, but the investigator recommended that information be obtained via warrant in order to avoid violating any search laws, the records state.
The warrant application also requested that the case be sealed. Twelve more requests were made to seal documents pertaining to the case according to the court docket.
The case was unsealed on April 17, 2024, and there are no indictments or arrests associated with the case, reported Pacific News.
Pornhub changed its rules around violent and underage content in December of 2020, a move critics said would not go far enough to address a growing problem of nonconsensual videos, Axios reported.
