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OnlyFans gives women the chance to earn money by making porn. Sex traffickers also use the platform to abuse and exploit them, say police and prosecutors. The accused range from social media influencers to cash-hungry boyfriends. “I don’t think I’ll ever be fully healed,” said one victim.

On an August morning in 2022, a young woman slipped out of a house in suburban Wisconsin and dashed to a waiting police car. Her hands shaking, she told officers it was the “most brave thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

For nearly two years, her boyfriend had held her captive, prosecutors say. She feared he’d kill her if she tried to leave. But just days earlier, after he’d poured hot grease down her back, she started plotting her escape, secretly messaging family and friends to alert police.

The young woman later explained her desperation to detectives: Almost every night, her boyfriend had forced her to record sex acts on camera to sell online. Among his chosen outlets was OnlyFans, the hugely successful website famous for porn.

OnlyFans says it empowers content creators, particularly women, to monetize sexually explicit images and videos in a safe online environment. But a Reuters investigation found women who said they had been deceived, drugged, terrorized and sexually enslaved to make money from the site. The findings are based on redacted U.S. police complaints and international court files, lawsuits and interviews with prosecutors, sex-trafficking investigators and women who say they’ve been trafficked.

In one prominent case, influencer Andrew Tate, with millions of followers worldwide on social media, is accused of forcing women in Romania to produce porn for OnlyFans and pocketing the profits. He has denied the charges.

Generating less attention are cases Reuters identified in the U.S., where some women endured weeks or months of alleged sexual slavery in ordinary-looking homes in quiet communities. The victim sometimes was a fiance or girlfriend, abused to pad the household budget, fund a couple’s retirement or cover children’s expenses, according to accounts in police or court files. Reuters is withholding the names of women who say they have been trafficked.