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Quoted By:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/onlyfans-sex-cases-society/
Melinda Lam’s husband had a secret.
Lam said she discovered it after a credit card payment for her son’s karate lessons was declined in December 2021. That led the 46-year-old pharmacist from Colorado to check the accounts she shared with her husband.
At least six credit cards were maxed out, she said, and nearly $40,000 had been drained from their savings. One card statement suggested where the money might have gone.
“It says OnlyFans, OnlyFans, OnlyFans,” recalled Lam, who was then undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.
Her husband would ultimately spend $135,000 on porn creators on OnlyFans, a subscription-based website, according to Lam and records she shared with Reuters. She said she was preparing to file for bankruptcy – and finalizing a divorce.
“Not only was it shocking,” she said, “it was devastating.”
OnlyFans and its supporters portray the platform as a safe and empowering outlet for lucrative, socially acceptable sex work. Nurses, teachers, police officers and Olympic athletes have posted racy content in pursuit of extra cash.
As OnlyFans takes porn into the mainstream, however, the platform also has generated ripple effects that have upended lives in unexpected and sometimes traumatizing ways.
Reuters reported some of the most direct harms in investigations that exposed child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual or “revenge porn” posted on the site. Those findings were drawn from police complaints obtained from more than 250 of the largest U.S. law enforcement agencies
Melinda Lam’s husband had a secret.
Lam said she discovered it after a credit card payment for her son’s karate lessons was declined in December 2021. That led the 46-year-old pharmacist from Colorado to check the accounts she shared with her husband.
At least six credit cards were maxed out, she said, and nearly $40,000 had been drained from their savings. One card statement suggested where the money might have gone.
“It says OnlyFans, OnlyFans, OnlyFans,” recalled Lam, who was then undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.
Her husband would ultimately spend $135,000 on porn creators on OnlyFans, a subscription-based website, according to Lam and records she shared with Reuters. She said she was preparing to file for bankruptcy – and finalizing a divorce.
“Not only was it shocking,” she said, “it was devastating.”
OnlyFans and its supporters portray the platform as a safe and empowering outlet for lucrative, socially acceptable sex work. Nurses, teachers, police officers and Olympic athletes have posted racy content in pursuit of extra cash.
As OnlyFans takes porn into the mainstream, however, the platform also has generated ripple effects that have upended lives in unexpected and sometimes traumatizing ways.
Reuters reported some of the most direct harms in investigations that exposed child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual or “revenge porn” posted on the site. Those findings were drawn from police complaints obtained from more than 250 of the largest U.S. law enforcement agencies
