Hurt2theCore

Daisy’s Destruction was uploaded on Hurt2theCore, the beginning of all hurtcore pornography sites on the darknet and one of its most popular; by 2013 it had gathered thousands of users with abusive content actively uploaded regularly (Daly, 2018). It was found in 2013 after an investigation by the FBI and the founder, Matthew Graham, was arrested and charged with 13 accounts of child pornography in 2014 (Morgans, 2016).  Matthew Graham, a student at Melbourne, ran a ‘PedoEmpire’ of sites, including Hurt2theCore, under the online name of ‘Lux’, Morgans continues. Interestingly, Graham believes he ‘never did anything wrong’ due to never participating in the acts he curated (Morgans, 2016:online).

One of the users of Graham’s Hurt2theCore was Matthew Falder, who groomed and blackmailed several young girls into sending pornographic images, including exposing their genitals, and uploaded them onto Hurt2theCore (Daly, 2018). However, hurtcore for Falder was not necessarily just about the sexual images as Daly states ‘his particular preference was for seeing children in positions of degradation and pain’ (online). In 2013 he was sentenced to 32 years in prison for over 100 offences against 48 people, marking the ‘first successful UK prosecution for crimes linked to “hurtcore” Daly continues (online).

Whilst these are two examples of people who participated or established a space for hurtcore and online child sexual abuse and pornography, their reasons for doing so are interesting. Whilst it is difficult to say that any good came of the two of them, Graham’s arrest did lead to a change in legislation in Victoria, Australia, about giving passwords to police (Johnston, 2016). It has also raised awareness of hurtcore pornography and online child pornography on the dark web.

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