Four employees of the infamous porn website Motherless posted at least 23 images of child sexual abuse between 2011 and 2025. That reports the NOS on Friday morning based on its own research. The Offlimits foundation, which analyzed the images at the request of the NOS, confirms NRC that these are child pornographic images.
The website, which runs on servers in the Netherlands, has received negative news coverage several times in the past month. For example, research by the American channel CNN showed that the website contained thousands of videos in which unconscious women were apparently raped. Users also exchanged tips for drugging and raping partners.
The material also contained images of child sexual abuse. This year, the child pornography reporting center of the Offlimits foundation found 25 cases of child pornography images on the website after reports.
Dozens of images
Creating, viewing and distributing child pornography material is a criminal offense in the Netherlands. The Public Prosecution Service took the website down on May 7, but almost immediately after the site came back online at the end of May, NRC found dozens of AI-generated child pornography images.
After the website came back up, Motherless administrators claimed that the website has rules to prevent abuse. But with “tens of thousands of uploads per day,” tracking down illegal material was like looking for “a needle in a haystack,” according to the administrators. They also claimed that “all content on this site is one hundred percent user generated [is] uploaded”.
That is not correct, NOS writes. According to the broadcaster, one employee of the website posted around 110,000 images on the website from his own account. “In eleven cases, the administrator concerned images of minors.”
Robbert Hoving, director of Offlimits, tells NRC that this news shows that Motherless “must be tackled very seriously”. “Both the site and the employees, because they simply consider themselves above the law.”
On black
As far as Hoving is concerned, the website should remain offline while the investigation is ongoing. Hoving points to the Online Terrorist and Child Pornographic Material Authority (ATKM), which, according to him, has the resources to put Motherless “on black”. But ATKM director Arda Gerkens denies this: “We do not have those resources. We can order individual videos to be removed, but that is as far as it goes.”
According to Gerkens, this is due to the fact that websites such as Motherless have no duty of care under European digital legislation (DSA). This would have obliged site administrators, hosting companies and data centers to actively prevent illegal images from appearing. “If we had had such a duty of care, this would have been proof that Motherless did not comply with it. But we do not have that in the law, so the ATKM cannot act on it.”
According to Gerkens, it is up to the Public Prosecution Service (OM) to act in this case. “That is also better, because this belongs under criminal law.” The ATKM falls under administrative law and can only impose fines, while the structural distribution of child pornography carries a prison sentence of up to 8 years.
When asked, a spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service in Zeeland and West Brabant said that an investigation into the website was underway, but that he could not answer any further questions in this regard.
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