Haley McNamara and Dani Pinter sit down with Melinda Tankard Reist, Co-Founder and Movement Director of Collective Shout, for a discussion around the recent successful campaign to remove a sexually violent game called “No Mercy” from Steam. Melinda describes how the game allows players to sexually assault your family members and rewards you for doing so. In less than a week, this campaign garnered over 70,000 signatures and over 3,000 emails sent to the CEO of Valve to remove this game. Despite the backlash and threats, Melinda and the team at Collective Shout continue their work to protect women and children from objectification and sexualization.

Melinda is an author, speaker, media commentator and campaigner. She is best known for her work addressing sexualization, objectification, harms of pornography, sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence against women. Melinda is author/editor of seven books (no. 8 on boundary-setting for girls forthcoming 2025). She co-founded Collective Shout for a world free of sexploitation 15 years ago, and is Movement Director. Melinda is an Ambassador for World Vision Australia, Compassion Australia, Hagar NZ and the youth mentoring body the Raise Foundation. She is also Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Culture and Ethics, Notre Dame University, Sydney and named in the Who’s Who of Australian Women and the World Who’s Who of Women. In 2024 she was the recipient of the ‘Global Impact Award’ presented at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation [CESE] Global Summit in Washington DC.

“Children being the targets of this deepfake technology is our worst nightmare”

Haley and Dani discuss the current state of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology in the realm of sexual exploitation. Overwhelmingly, these tools are used for pornographic material, and 10% of teenagers have reported being aware of deepfake pornography depicting someone they know. They also dig into how this leads to desensitization towards sexualizing children and overwhelming law enforcement.

-- Urge your representatives to pass the TAKE IT DOWN Act: https://advocacy.charityengine.net/Default.aspx?isid=2355

-- Urge Apple and Google to have better policies for A.I. apps:
https://endsexualexploitation.org/AI-Deepfake-Apps

Watch the video version of this episode here: https://youtu.be/uItdvTL3pIU

Haley McNamara and Dani Pinter discuss The Guardian article: "‘I didn’t start out wanting to see kids’: are porn algorithms feeding a generation of paedophiles – or creating one?"

They talk about the chilling reality of how pornography platforms algorithms cause escalation for so many of their visitors.

Read the full article on The Guardian here: https://tinyurl.com/yc48mczp

Learn more about the harms of pornography: https://endsexualexploitation.org/issues/pornography/

Haley McNamara (NCOSE Senior VP of Programs and Initiatives) and Dani Pinter (Senior VP and Director at the NCOSE Law Center) talk about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and why it's essential for it to end. They also discuss the history of the Dirty Dozen List and what led to this unique version of the list in 2025.

Since its inception in 1996, Section 230 has effectively provided blanket immunity to big tech companies for harms facilitated on their platforms. It's time to call for a full repeal of CDA Section 230!

Learn more and take action here: www.DirtyDozenList.org

Watch the video version of this episode here: https://youtu.be/G7VZVJ1QRUc

In this special episode of the Ending Sexploitation Podcast, Lisa Thompson (Vice President of Research at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation) chats with Kristen Jenson.

Kristen is the founder of Defend Young Minds and #1 best-selling author of Good Pictures Bad Pictures: Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids and Good Pictures Bad Pictures Jr.: A Simple Plan to Protect Young Minds. She is the CEO of Glen Cove Press LLC and the executive producer of the Brain Defense: Digital Safety curriculum.

Visit Defend Young Minds:
https://www.defendyoungminds.com/

For more information on the harms of pornography:
https://endsexualexploitation.org/issues/pornography/

In this special episode of the Ending Sexploitation Podcast, Teresa J. Helm (Survivor Services Coordinator at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation) chats with Cristian Eduardo.

Cristian champions anti-trafficking initiatives, particularly the Equality Model, and fervently advocates for immigrant and LGBTQ+ rights. He serves as a Survivor Leader in this movement engaged with various Survivor Advisory Boards and Councils. He is the is a co-founder of United Immigrants of New York and Mujeres en Resistencia, which are coalitions raising awareness around gender-based violence and providing accessible resources to the Spanish-speaking and Latino-immigrant communities.

For more information on the dangers of prostitution: https://endsexualexploitation.org/issues/prostitution/

Watch the video version of this episode:
https://youtu.be/zGb5vSS2E_4

In this special episode of the Ending Sexploitation Podcast, Dani Pinter (Senior Vice President and Director of the NCOSE Law Center) chats with Joshua Broome about this important topic. Joshua is an author, speaker, and advocate for shining a light on the harms of pornography.

Watch the video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/8bB4B-xebnM

Dr. Stephany Powell, Director of Law Enforcement Training and Survivor Services at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, joins the Ending Sexploitation podcast to discuss the concept of Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) through the lens of implicit bias. 

Dr. Powell explains that Trauma-Informed Care entails a paradigm shift from wondering, “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”. She says, “Once we understand ‘What happened to you’, without bias, then that’s when we can really begin our journey alongside our clients to be able to help them become the person that they want to be.” 

Dr. Powell explains that the ability to understand people’s trauma and provide them with Trauma-Informed Care is often hindered by our own implicit biases. Implicit biases are the attitudes or stereotypes we unconsciously hold which affect the way we view and treat other people. They are different from explicit biases in that we do not know we have them and they can even be in opposition to our declared beliefs. Dr. Powell emphasizes that everyone has implicit biases. Fortunately, these biases can be gradually unlearned, but in order for this to happen we first have to recognize what our implicit biases are and how they are affecting our attitudes and behaviors.