Choose a Girl

Authorities said the pornography depicted girls and boys who appeared to be as young as 2 years old. Porn is full of moments and observations like these, which spark trains of thought that can hurtle off to various locations. It is a tricky book to write about because of this generative quality, and because the sentiments that strike me as particularly consequential maybe appear banal to a different reader. In fact, the disparateness of our perspectives on and experiences of sex and porn, alongside the fact we mostly assume ourselves to be the norm, is something I was routinely reminded of while reading Porn.

GirlsDoPorn boss who went on the lam extradited to San Diego to face sex trafficking charges

• According to court documents, the women typically answered ads for a purported modeling agency, then were flown by the defendants to San Diego.
• But I found that, even when certain conversations covered similar ground, the overlap was actually instructive.
• When 22 women sued independent label Girls Do Porn in June for allegedly manipulating them into performing sex acts for a global audience, it wasn’t enough for giant adult video site Pornhub to stop promoting Girls Do Porn as an official “Content Partner” and profiting from the arrangement.
• “If someone’s doing that sort out of curiosity, you want to nudge them away from it before they get involved in it, because we can’t arrest our way out of the problem,” Scanlan says.
• She said half of all the women she spoke to complained to her about getting paid less than they were promised.

“I worried about what porn stood for, I worried about what it has done to us, is doing to us and will do to us, and I worried that this worry made me a bad feminist,” she writes. She started thinking about how she might embark on a book to investigate how we really use and think about porn. Some of the women allege in court documents that the ensuing shame has driven them to depression, suicidal thoughts, or in at least one case, to move entirely out of the country. “Most consumers in general do not feel comfortable uploading their IDs” when online, noted Mike Stabile, director of public policy for the Free Speech Coalition, an adult entertainment trade association that has joined in fighting the lawsuits.

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Wolfe admitted to posting those videos on the U.S. website GirlsDoPorn for public viewing. The complaint further alleges that Pratt took Althaus’ cellphone during the filming and only gave it back to her afterward. “He engages in dangerous and deceptive practices wherever he goes, and we will not waiver until justice is served,” she added, according to Complex. There were times, Jane Doe admitted, she had to be hospitalized because she couldn’t trust herself. 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. When the victims arrived in San Diego for their shoots, they were prevented from reading their contracts and coerced into participating through lies, deception, and intimidation.

But not the videos strewn across its site, unless they were directly uploaded to that Girls Do Porn page. 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. Pratt is charged with multiple counts of conspiracy and sex trafficking, as well as one count of producing child pornography in connection with the scheme, from which he and his team made millions, court records show.

• GirlsDoPorn producer Ruben Andre Garcia has been accused of pressurising these girls into sex acts.
• As they strike off more independently into the online world, teens and young adults need opportunities to take risks with safety nets and to rely on their caregivers and trusted adults for support and guidance.
• According to public court filings, Pratt and his co-defendants used force, fraud, and coercion to recruit hundreds of young adult women – most in their late teens – and at least one minor victim, to appear in GirlsDoPorn videos.
• The defendants represented that the videos would be sold exclusively on DVDs overseas for private use and provided other women as references, who lied to the victims, claiming they had filmed videos and no one had ever found out.
• People displaying this compulsive sexual behavior may try (and fail) to reduce their use of porn, even despite negative consequences and feelings of guilt.

On July 7, the women and MindGeek filed a joint motion to suspend proceedings for 30 days so they could discuss a “possible resolution of this action (including potential mediation or other alternative dispute resolution.” The court granted the motion. A court document filed Friday noted that a settlement agreement had been reached and dismissed the claims. Althaus is one of dozens of victims who have brought similar allegations against GirlsDoPorn and websites like Pornhub that promoted the since-closed website’s content, “generated millions of dollars in revenue,” the lawsuit states.