Pornhub Lawsuits: 300 Say Site Profited From Trafficking, Abuse

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In several cases, the women filmed for GirlsDoPorn would be propositioned outside of the video shoot. Andre Garcia, who reportedly sexually assaulted several women before, during, or after the film shoot, would often text them and ask to have sex outside of the shoot. Website owner Michael Pratt would also ask women to have sex with him for generally small sums of money – $400 or so – but was rejected almost every single time. Many of the women were filmed as soon as they were picked up at the airport, with cameras being on them from the moment they arrived until they left. But when traveling through the hotels – where the video shoots always took place – the production crew would attempt to hide the fact that they were filming. It would later be learned that they didn’t have any of the necessary permits to film adult content, and often smuggled the film and sound equipment to the hotel room in suitcases and other large luggage containers.

Lawsuit outcomes

As they faced Garcia at the sentencing last week, all of the women recalled the deep trauma they faced as a result of his actions. Half of them said the widespread proliferation of their abuse videos convinced them death was a better option than living in perpetual pain and humiliation. The women faced a dark reality – the knowledge that for the rest of their lives, people would use the crime scene footage of their abuse for both pleasure and profit. GirlsDoPorn filmed more than 100 women, many who had their lives destroyed by Garcia and his cohorts. The women were lied to, Garcia recruited some when they were still underage, and all of them were lured to California through an intricate web of deception.

• Pratt victimized hundreds of young women, federal prosecutors said, including at least one girl under the age of 18.
• «The findings of fact in the civil case do not carry over to the criminal case where the government will have to prove the facts under a much more stringent standard.»
• In the end, Jane was only paid $3,000 – roughly half of what she had been originally promised.
• The women were told the videos would go to private DVD collections overseas, but instead were widely disseminated on the GirlsDoPorn network of sites, as well as free pornography sites.
• However, simply searching for a term such as \»girls do porn\» would not typically be considered solicitation or promotion of prostitution.

Dethroned pageant queen alleges she was raped, forced into explicit video in lawsuit against Pornhub

• They’ve just been so traumatized with everything they’ve gone through with having to provide services to multiple buyers a day.
• We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.©2024 GIZMODO USA LLC.
• Apps that allow parental restrictions on a minor child’s phone are common, but Common Sense Media’s recent research found that parental control apps sent the most notifications during school hours, sending a median of almost 30 notifications during the school day!
• During his own testimony in October of 2019, Matthew Wolfe would admit that he and Andre Garcia were continuing to recruit young women to film scenes for the website, despite them standing trial for widespread fraud.

Victims who consumed alcohol or smoked marijuana were directed to make a recorded statement saying that they were not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol, even though they had just smoked marijuana or drank alcohol. Other co-defendants have struck plea deals, but Pratt — who faces decades in federal prison if convicted — could choose to take the case to trial after pleading not guilty. There is no dispute Deyun Shi bludgeoned his teenage relatives in 2016, but his attorneys argue during his trial that he was suffering from mental illness. Understanding factors (e.g., knowledge, attitude, and behavioral skills) affecting the sexual behaviors of the youth and adolescence is very important.

As he had seen done through his work on prior sites, Michael Pratt would feature small previews of the GirlsDoPorn videos on larger platforms – Pornhub, Xvideos, Youporn – which were some of the largest websites in the entire world. But the clips would always direct viewers to his website, GirlsDoPorn.com, where they could unlock the full video for a monthly subscription. Megan was a young woman from the American northeast, who would become a foster child at the age of 12. She would spend the next handful of years in the foster system, at times struggling with anxiety and depression. While she struggled with these emotional issues at an earlier age than most – which she described as common symptoms of children in foster care – she attempted to create a normal life for herself. The women told the court they had replied to ads on Craigslist asking for “beautiful college-type preppy girls” aged 18 to 22 interested in modelling.

Police had been surveilling Pratt’s home in Hidden Meadows, California, which Pratt had not been to since summer of last year – having left behind a cat and several computers. These computers were later removed from the property by a couple of Pratt’s former employees, Fredrick and Efrain Jimenez, who were later charged with obstructing sex-trafficking enforcement. When questioned, they claimed to have not seen any computers inside of the home, which went against testimony provided by a pet-sitting service that Pratt had hired to take care of his cat. The brothers plead ignorance, but authorities believe that the two either destroyed or hid the computers somewhere in an attempt to hinder their investigation.

Attorneys for Michael Pratt, Matthew Wolfe, and Andre Garcia – the three main defendants in this case – would begin to argue that these four young women were just feeling remorse for having appeared in a pornographic film. Over the next three years, the lawyers for GirlsDoPorn would begin to present a case that amounted to digital slut-shaming, saying that the women only now regretted their appearance after being paid, and were very much in the minority of women featured on the site. As I detailed a bit at the top of the episode, GirlsDoPorn would gain some national notoriety throughout 2013, when the Miss Teen USA scandal broke for the first time. That scandal would actually be repeated the following year when an additional Miss Teen USA candidate was outed as having appeared in a GirlsDoPorn video; like the prior contestant, she too was stripped of her title and eliminated from all of the Miss Teen USA material (websites, promos, etc.). But these scandals – while damaging for the women involved – only helped the website gain more and more publicity. Authorities say Pratt posted clips of the women’s videos online as a method of attracting viewers to the website’s full-length videos, a scheme that allegedly netted the website’s owners more than $17 million in revenue.

Most were told the video production would take around 30 minutes, when in reality, they typically lasted for several hours. The sex for the video shoots was rough and caused many victims pain, and in some cases bleeding. In response, Garcia and others told the victims that they had to continue and finish the videos.