October 15, 2020

Attorney General Barr Must Investigate Netflix Over Child Pornography Claims, Say PTC and Enough is Enough
 

LOS ANGELES (October 15, 2020) – The Parents Television Council and Enough is Enough have called on U.S. Attorney General William Barr to investigate Netflix to see if the company violated federal statutes against child pornography over Cuties. In a letter to the Attorney General, the organizations are also calling attention “to a broader, consistent pattern of Netflix sexualizing children” in its programs. Netflix was recently handed an indictment by a grand jury in Tyler County, Texas, for the “promotion of lewd visual material depicting [a] child” in Cuties.

Cuties features scenes of 11-year-old girls performing highly eroticized dance routines. Additionally, the 11-year-old main female character is depicted pulling her pants and underpants down to photograph her genitals, which she then posts online. A later scene depicts her disrobing in an attempt to seduce an adult man (who is a family member). 

“We are urging the Attorney General to thoroughly investigate whether Netflix has violated federal law in its distribution of the film Cuties. If the Texas grand jury’s indictment is any indication, then a federal investigation is warranted. It is time for Netflix to be held to account for its apparent infatuation with sexualizing children in its entertainment programming, of which Cuties is one of many examples,” said PTC President Tim Winter.

“At a time in America in which the sexual exploitation of children in the digital world has escalated exponentially during COVID and virtual learning, Cuties is only throwing gasoline on the fire by giving dangerous permission-giving beliefs to young girls that sexting, dancing provocatively and seducing adult men is desirable, acceptable and safe,” said Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough Is Enough®. “Furthermore, the film whets the appetites of sexual predators and sexually exploits the young girls that the film’s producers purport to care about. It’s past time for Netflix and other streaming platforms to get on board with America’s zero-tolerance policy of child pornography or face criminal charges.”

The letter points out that Netflix hosts other programs that sexualize children:

  • A Netflix drama called Desire depicts a nine-year-old girl masturbating to climax while writhing back and forth on a pillow, pretending it to be a horse. 
  • A Netflix series called Sex Education opens with a high-school aged couple having sex. The girl’s breasts were fully exposed as she asks her boyfriend, “Do you like my tits? Do you want to come on them?” 
  • The Netflix original animated series Big Mouth is particularly vile in its attempts to sexualize pubescent children. According to the show’s IMDB page, episodes have contained full screen close-up of a 13-year-old’s penis and testicles; a girl talking to her vagina about her life -- the vulva and clitoris and labia are shown in graphic close up for extended periods of time; a middle-school student’s bare breasts are drawn; two 12-year-old and 2 high schoolers play a game where they face each other in competition to see who can ejaculate onto a cracker the fastest.

Concerned citizens are urged to sign the EIE petition for DOJ to investigate Netflix film Cuties on child pornography violations and the PTC petition calling on for Netflix to remove Cuties from its streaming platform.