Hurtcore, a portmanteau of the words "hardcore" and "hurt", is a name given to a particularly extreme form of pornography (most often child pornography), usually involving degrading violence, bodily harm and torture relating to child sexual abuse. [1] [2] [3] [4] Eileen Ormsby, Australian writer and author of The Darkest Web, [5] described hurtcore as "a fetish for people who get aroused by the infliction of pain, or even torture, on another person who is not a willing participant". [1] An additional motivation for the perpetrator, next to their position of power over their victims, can be the reaction of their victims to the physical abuse, like crying or screaming of pain. This reaction can stimulate the arousal of the perpetrator even more.
Some dark web forums are dedicated to the discussion, and sharing of images and videos, of hurtcore. [6] In 2013, Vice called Hurt2theCore "the dark web's most notorious hurtcore site", [1] run by Matthew Graham, [7] who became known as the "King of Hurtcore", [1] as well as "one of the biggest child pornography and hurtcore distributors in the world". [8] The case of Matthew Falder was the UK National Crime Agency's first successful hurtcore prosecution. [9]
Although most hurtcore is usually child porn, adult hurtcore also exists, which usually comes in the form of rape porn, filmed domestic violence and can also overlap with BDSM. Because "adult hurtcore" contains no children, and thus is not child porn, this type of it is not illegal, but many porn and gore websites will still usually forbid its hosting. [1]
Rape pornography is a subgenre of pornography involving the description or depiction of rape. Such pornography either involves simulated rape, wherein sexually consenting adults feign rape, or it involves actual rape. Victims of actual rape may be coerced to feign consent such that the pornography produced deceptively appears as simulated rape or non-rape pornography. The depiction of rape in non-pornographic media is not considered rape pornography. Simulated scenes of rape and other forms of sexual violence have appeared in mainstream cinema, including rape and revenge films, almost since its advent.
Operation Cathedral was a police operation that broke up a major international child pornography ring called The Wonderland Club operating over the Internet. It was led by the British National Crime Squad in cooperation with 1,500 officers from 13 other police forces around the world, who simultaneously arrested 104 suspects in 13 countries on 2 September 1998. The case received widespread international attention due to the highly organised nature of the ring, leading to public concerns of online child sexual abuse and legislative changes in the UK.
Graphic violence refers to the depiction of especially vivid, explicit, brutal and realistic acts of violence in visual media such as film, television, and video games. It may be real, simulated live action, or animated.
Eric Robertson Cullen was a Scottish actor, who was famous for his role as Wee Burney in BBC's Rab C. Nesbitt. Cullen was born with achondroplasia—a type of dwarfism.
Task Force Argos is a branch of the Queensland Police Service, responsible for the investigation of online child exploitation and abuse. Founded in 1997, the unit's original charter was to investigate institutional child abuse allegations arising from the Forde Inquiry.
Child pornography is erotic material that depicts persons under the designated age of majority. The precise characteristics of what constitutes child pornography varies by criminal jurisdiction.
Revenge porn is the distribution of sexually explicit images or videos of individuals without their consent, with the punitive intention to create public humiliation or character assassination out of revenge against the victim. The material may have been made by an ex-partner from an intimate relationship with the knowledge and consent of the subject at the time, or it may have been made without their knowledge. The subject may have experienced sexual violence during the recording of the material, in some cases facilitated by psychoactive chemicals such as date rape drugs which also cause a reduced sense of pain and involvement in the sexual act, dissociative effects and amnesia.
Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom concerns the proliferation of indecent images, online exploitation, transnational abuse, and contact abuse. Efforts to prevent child sexual abuse include providing information to children and parents and disrupting abusive situations. However, the underreporting of cases and the motives of the offenders who often work in groups known as grooming gangs is a recurrent topic.
Child sexual abuse is a matter of concern in Australia, and is the subject of investigation and prosecution under the law, and of academic study into its prevalence, causes and social implications.
Peter Gerard Scully is an Australian convicted murderer and child sex offender who is imprisoned for life in the Philippines after being convicted of one count of human trafficking and five counts of rape by sexual assault of children. Scully was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2018. In November 2022, he received a second conviction and was sentenced to an additional 129 years in prison.
Richard William Huckle was an English serial child sex offender. He was arrested by Britain's National Crime Agency in 2014 after a tip-off from the Australian Federal Police and convicted in 2016 of 71 charges of sexual offences against children, committed while he served as a Christian missionary and a freelance photographer in Malaysia.
Childs Play [sic] was a website on the darknet featuring child sexual abuse material that operated from April 2016 to September 2017, which at its peak was the largest of its class. The site was concealed by being run as a hidden service on the Tor network. After running the site for the first six months, owner Benjamin Faulkner of North Bay, Ontario, Canada, was captured by the United States Department of Homeland Security. For the remaining eleven months the website was owned and operated by the Australian Queensland Police Service's Task Force Argos, as part of Operation Artemis.
Matthew Alexander Falder is an English convicted serial sex offender and blackmailer. From a period of time between 2009 and 2017, he coerced his victims online into sending him degrading images of themselves or into committing crimes against a third person such as rape or assault. He managed this by making threats to the victim by saying he would send their family or friends degrading information or revealing pictures of them if they did not comply with his commands. Falder hid behind anonymous accounts on the web and then re-posted the images to gain a higher status on the dark web. Investigators said that he "revelled" in getting images to share on hurtcore websites. The National Crime Agency (NCA), described him as "one of the most prolific and depraved offenders they had ever encountered."
Operation Voicer was a major police investigation into serious sexual offences against pre-school aged children and infants across England, launched in 2014. The perpetrators groomed the families of the young victims, in some cases before the babies were even born. By September 2015, seven offenders were jailed, 28 further suspects had been arrested, three victims were identified, and 33 children were safeguarded. Ten offenders received significant prison sentences.
Deepfake pornography, or simply fake pornography, is a type of synthetic pornography that is created via altering already-existing photographs or video by applying deepfake technology to the images of the participants. The use of deepfake pornography has sparked controversy because it involves the making and sharing of realistic videos featuring non-consenting individuals, typically female celebrities, and is sometimes used for revenge porn. Efforts are being made to combat these ethical concerns through legislation and technology-based solutions.
Cybersex trafficking, live streaming sexual abuse, webcam sex tourism/abuse or ICTs -facilitated sexual exploitation is a cybercrime involving sex trafficking and the live streaming of coerced sexual acts and/or rape on webcam.
The Welcome to Video case involved the investigation and prosecution of a child pornography ring which traded videos through the South Korean website Welcome to Video, owned and operated by Son Jung-woo. Authorities estimated about 360,000 downloads had been made through the website, which had roughly 1.2 million members, 4,000 of which were paid members, from 38 countries. Through international cooperation and investigations, 337 people were arrested on charges of possessing child pornography.
764 is a decentralized transnational sextortion network with alleged ideological ties to the Order of Nine Angles. It is classified as a terror network by the U.S. Department of Justice, and is considered by the FBI as a "tier one" terrorist threat. The Canadian RCMP also classifies 764 as an "ideological violent extremist network", and it has been characterized as a "satanic neo-nazi cult" by multiple sources. The network is most present on Discord and Telegram and usually targets children ages 8 to 17, particularly marginalized children or those suffering from mental health challenges. 764 was founded in 2021 by Bradley Cadenhead, a teenager from Stephenville, Texas, the group derives its name from the town's ZIP code.
Rape in Japan is sexual assault involving sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent in the nation. Victims and perpetrators include Japanese citizens, residents, and foreign nationals from a wide range of backgrounds and every social class.