A French watchdog released a report Wednesday on behalf of the High Council for Equality between Women and Men. The report “Pornocriminality: let’s put an end to the impunity of the pornography industry!” was formally handed to Bérangère Couillard, the Minister for Gender Equality and the Fight against Discrimination.

In a study which took over a year, the High Council’s Violence Against Women Commission examined pornographic videos available online, with hearings along with studies of existing literature. Throughout March, they reviewed the content of the four most popular pornographic platforms, finding that “there are 1.4 million videos of sadistic practices’.  According to the report, as much as “90% of pornographic content presents unsimulated acts of physical, sexual or verbal violence against women.” They further highlight that children are also affected, with 1.3 million child-themed videos that “trivialize and eroticize incest and child criminality.”

They found that not only were these acts morally shocking, but “some of this violent content meets the legal definition of acts of torture and barbarism,” including 70,118 under the keyword “surprise” and 13,898 under “torture.” They pointed to “several legal proceedings” currently underway with producers accused of offences ranging from aggravated human trafficking and pimping, to gang rape and rape with acts of torture and barbarity.

The report denounces possible claims that such content is cinema, as it says “the acts are not simulated, the violence is real,” or allowed under liberal principles of expression, sexual liberation or artistic freedom as ignorant, instead claiming that they “violate the principles of French and international law.”  They point to failures of the government and specifically Pharos, a government platform for reporting illegal content, for failing to act on this, calling “on French institutions to ensure that these illegal activities are finally prosecuted and published.”

In a France Inter interview, the council’s president, Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette, described violent pornography as “a factory for future rapists, future killers of women,” stating that there is “no justification in 2023 for tolerating these unlawful acts of unbearable torment” that were accessible to minors. She told AFP, “our aim is to shake people’s consciences by crudely describing the torture practices that are commonplace in the porn industry. We call it ‘pornocrime’ because these practices are illegal and fall under the penal code.”

The committee have a number of propositions, including blocking “pornographic websites that do not apply effective age controls” (which the country passed a law requiring in 2020, however this has not yet been enacted, with porn sites reluctant to implement it), establishing a right to remove sexual content at the request of any person featured in a recording, and enforcing sex education in schools to combat the risk of young people educated primarily by watching porn, including regular critiques of pornography.