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“Rather than the mere headshots and clothing photoshoot (sic) that she had agreed to fly to San Diego to do, Pratt began demanding that Plaintiff film nude and sexually explicit videos. When Plaintiff refused, Pratt, now 41, and his conspirators immediately pressured her and plied her with booze and pills to soften her reluctance,” the lawsuit states. The suit alleges that soon after it began publishing the GirlsDoPorn videos, Aylo began receiving takedown requests from the women featured in the films.
- Once the women arrived in San Diego to shoot, they said, they were lured to a hotel room, where they were plied with marijuana and alcohol.
- However, Girls Do Porn distributed the videos after they were shot, and they appeared on popular porn websites.
- Some it was found to have been transferred overseas, to bank accounts registered in the island nation of Vanuatu, while other cash had been converted into various cryptocurrencies.
- Four of the website’s other employees have pleaded guilty to a variety of felonies.
Attorneys Involved in the Case
Simply searching for a term such as “girls do porn” on a website is not illegal and generally does not constitute criminal activity. However, simply searching for a term such as “girls do porn” would not typically be considered solicitation or promotion of prostitution. Michael James Pratt disappeared in the summer of 2019, just before he was indicted on federal conspiracy and sex trafficking charges stemming from what prosecutors said was a decade-long scheme to con hundreds of teens and young women into appearing in adult videos for the website he owned.
- The victims suffered immense emotional distress and economic harm, and their lives were derailed for years.
- But GirlsDoPorn’s successful manipulation was possible because large swaths of society still label women who participate in sex work as cultural pariahs.
- Garcia admitted that victims were also misled about how long the video shoots lasted.
- In the lawsuit, which sought $500,000 for each of the women, it was alleged that the producers of GirlsDoPorn had promised each woman that the video would only be released on physical formats in foreign nations, not on several of the most popular websites in the entire world.
- Jones notes that it’s not easy to discern what’s fake and what’s real in porn; the line between fantasy and exaggeration can be blurry.
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Investigators said that victims were forced into performing nonconsensual sexual acts, and when they wanted their videos removed from the websites, Pratt and his partners threatened and intimidated them. Garcia told these women that the videos would be published only on DVDs and sold overseas. However, the operators of Girls Do Porn posted them for free on websites including Pornhub, causing extreme trauma to the victims. In some cases, these girls were forced to change their communities or even change their names after their families came to know about it.
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But GirlsDoPorn’s successful manipulation was possible because large swaths of society still label women who participate in sex work as cultural pariahs. The GirlsDoPorn operators knew this, and they wagered the Does’ shame over appearing in porn would likely ensure these victims would not take the site’s management to task for this fraud. The founder of Girls Do Porn, a website that published videos of women who said they were coerced into making sex tapes, was arrested in Spain this week after being on the run for years from sex trafficking and child sex abuse images charges. Prosecutors allege he and other GirlsDoPorn employees coerced hundreds of women to appear in pornographic videos under false pretenses, with most of the videos filmed in San Diego.
Very few photos of him exist on the internet, but the ones that do will be posted on the podcast website as well as our social media accounts. Some it was found to have been transferred overseas, to bank accounts registered in the island nation of Vanuatu, while other cash had been converted into various cryptocurrencies. Attorneys successfully arguing that the two were significant flight risks that posed a danger to the community (especially the victims, whom they had already shown a proclivity to harassing and threatening in the past). It would later be released by authorities that during the search of the GirlsDoPorn office, investigators found evidence that hinted at the defendants fleeing to countries without extradition agreements. And since Michael Pratt, the site’s founder, had yet to be located, that argument seemed to carry some added weight.
After the lawsuit was filed, Pratt, Wolfe, and other GirlsDoPorn employees were charged by federal prosecutors with conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and other alleged offenses. Hundreds of people who were coerced into performing sex acts by GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys now have the full rights to their videos, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. Given that revenge porn distributors have historically evaded punishment due to insufficient legal guidelines, copyright is a useful tool—copyright holders can fine websites up to $150,000 per image if they don’t comply with DMCA takedown requests.
