Choose a Girl

As survivors and data show, some people have been forced, tricked, or coerced into entering the industry in the first place, unable to leave once they’ve started. Not only that, but performers who are already in the industry can be forced, tricked, or coerced into performing sex acts they’re uncomfortable with, or performing with other performers on their “no” list. Still, from now on, Girls Do Porn is required to explicitly state in recruitment postings that the videos will be posted online.

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Six of the women whose videos were posted online spoke at Gyi’s sentencing, and each said Gyi assured them their videos would not be seen on the internet, but soon discovered they had been lied to. Pratt’s GirlsDoPorn co-conspirator, Michael Isaac Wolfe, admitted to coercing about 100 “models” between the ages of 18 and 23 into making pornographic videos for their San Diego-based website, which he said would not be shared in the United States. A former pageant queen is alleging she was raped and forced to film pornography in a new lawsuit against Pornhub and its parent company, MindGeek, which changed its name to Aylo in August. The videos eventually led to a federal investigation and criminal charges, according to the lawsuit which lists 121 “Jane Doe” plaintiffs.

Porn site to pay $12.7m to women who didn’t know videos would be posted

Child safety advocates celebrated a win in June, when the congressional reauthorization for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children used the term “child sexual abuse material” (CSAM) instead of “child pornography” to describe the scourge the agency seeks to eradicate. The National Center runs the CyberTipline national reporting service for online exploitation of children. Survivors of image-based sexual abuse — overwhelmingly women and girls — can experience the same kinds of mental health issues as those who have been physically sexually assaulted.

Once Doe agreed to film the video, she was rushed through signing a contract and told “we needed to get this done.” Wolfe and Garcia soon put furniture in front of the hotel room door during filming; Jane Doe 7 said she couldn’t leave and was scared. Jane Doe 7 ended up filming a porn video under duress in a hotel room where furniture blocked the door, preventing her from leaving. When she flew to San Diego in October 2013 with her friend who found a modeling ad on Craigslist, Jane Doe 7 believed she’d be paid $2,000 to do a nude photo shoot. Most of these women were enticed to hotel rooms in San Diego through modelling shoot ads posted by Girls Do Porn. Garcia’s sentencing is a groundbreaking moment in the fight against sex trafficking, but it’s not a sufficient end to the story. Fifty GirlsDoPorn victims are now suing Pornhub, demanding more than $100 million in damages for their pain and suffering.

• However, when questioned about the specifics of the lawsuit – such as whether these women were being told that the footage they were filming was only going to be distributed on DVDs in foreign nations – Wolfe decided to play stupid.
• If the women ever changed their minds about filming or completing the scenes, the defendants threatened to sue them, cancel their flights home or post footage that had already been filmed online, federal prosecutors said.
• She still feels each of her emotions deeply, rattled often by the sting of trauma but is emerging with a hopefulness she hasn’t had over the last six-and-a-half years.
• She noticed there was blood on the bed, but “was told it was fine and that she would get used to it,” according to the indictment.

It was a moment hundreds of women had been waiting for — and one many feared would never come. Others prosecuted include porn actor Ruben Andre Garcia, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison and Pratt’s business partner Matthew Isaac Wolfe, who received a 14-year sentence earlier this year. Videographer Theodore Gyi was sentenced to four years in prison, while administrative assistant Valorie Moser awaits sentencing later this year.

From now on, Girls Do Porn is required to explicitly state in recruitment postings that the videos will be posted online. Participants must also get copies of the contracts before arriving, and sign off on their names or personal information being used, Enright ruled. Meanwhile, the men still face federal charges of sex trafficking and producing child porn.

The hard drives were then set on fire, hopefully destroying the information that had been used to hurt so many people for so long. Attorneys for the defendants would present their case as-if the victims had been aware of the scheme from the beginning, despite the plaintiffs having email and phone records which very clearly laid out a pattern of deception carried out on dozens of women over several years. When the plaintiffs began presenting their testimony, this entire scheme was laid bare for the world to see. “Garcia coached me on how to correspond with the prospective women, to gain their trust, even if that included telling lies and hiding information. Garcia instructed me to tell women the videos they filmed would never be released in the United States or on the internet.” After emailing in to learn more about these ads, the three men from GirlsDoPorn – Pratt, Wolfe, and Garcia – would begin to respond to the young women through aliases. Michael Pratt often used the names Mark and Jonathan, Matthew Wolfe often used the names Ben or Isaac (oftentimes with the surname “Fox” attached), and Andre Garcia typically used the alias of Jonathan.

But through pageants, she began to realize that modeling was a legitimate career path moving forward, and could provide opportunities to not only earn decent pay but to see the world. With her eighteenth birthday approaching, and her beginning to consider college – as well as life in the adult world, as she began to age out of the foster system – she began to look for job opportunities. Eventually, she found one, which provided solid pay for just a few hours’ work. For a girl that didn’t have many resources to rely on, it seemed like a dream-come-true.

In 2019, a Maryland appellate court found 6-1 that child pornography laws apply when a teen is both the subject and sender of sexually explicit media. Under the ruling, where the judicial panel encouraged lawmakers to change the law, the appellate court upheld a lower court’s decision where a 16-year-old girl was convicted as her own pornographer. How could millennial women, living in an age where porn is almost exclusively viewed online, ever believe their own videos would never be posted on the Internet? To start, it takes a thought-out criminal scheme where the perpetrators were dedicated to leaving no paper trail.