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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. After roughly two years of slow and sustained success, Michael Pratt decided to recruit his old friend, Matthew Wolfe, to help him work on the site in 2011. Wolfe decided to move to the U.S. and live near Pratt in San Diego, California. While Pratt handled a lot more of the executive decisions, Wolfe became involved in the day-to-day operations of GirlsDoPorn, filming the shoots in high-end hotel rooms in Southern California (in fact, it was Wolfe you heard interviewing the woman at the beginning of this episode).

Investigation found images of abuse

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. Prosecutors will argue Thursday, when Pratt is due back in court for a bail hearing, that he is both a flight risk and a danger to the community. “For a long time, I thought that I just made a stupid decision,” Mariah said Tuesday. “I did not realize that I was sex trafficked.” District Judge Janis Sammartino, who has sentenced all the other defendants in the GirlsDoPorn case other than website owner Michael James Pratt , whose case remains ongoing. Sonny and Rollins discover her on the set of a movie in New Hampshire where Evie refuses to go back to home or to school. There is nothing the detectives can do except watch as Evie takes quaaludes, washes it down, drops her robe, and steps on to the set where there are over ten naked men waiting for her.

• First, Jane Doe 7 found out the photo shoot was actually a video shoot only when she was picked up at the airport by Matthew Wolfe, a videographer working for the porn website GirlsDoPorn.
• Garcia told these women that the videos would be published only on DVDs and sold overseas.
• “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.
• According to prosecutors, he tricked women into appearing in sex videos after promising them they would only be sold in DVD and not be distributed on the internet.

‘A Despicable Crime’: FBI Adds GirlsDoPorn Founder to Top 10 Most Wanted List for Alleged Sex Trafficking Scheme

Hundreds of victims of GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToy, sex-trafficking rings, have now been given the rights to the videos and millions of dollars in damages. The individuals behind the scheme, according to the DOJ, told the women the videos would only be sold on DVDs outside of the United States and the footage would not be posted to the internet. Instead, they then posted short videoclips to online platforms, such as Pornhub, and full-length versions to their GirlsDoPorn website. As deepfake technology has become increasingly capable of creating realistic imagery and easier to use, hundreds of websites and apps designed to create or host deepfake sexual abuse have appeared.

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• The ad explained that young, attractive girls could earn thousands of dollars for modeling work – which would last an hour or two at the most – and featured a link to the website beginmodeling.com (which was a legitimate-looking modeling page featuring pictures of clothed models).
• A popular subreddit had already begun to pop up on Reddit, and the site would officially launch its own forum in 2014.
• Prosecution of minors under child pornography laws, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned in 2019, “has the potential to have dire legal ramifications for teens,” as sexting among young people—and prosecution of them under child pornography laws—continues to rise.
• “The capture of Michael Pratt is an example of how the FBI will pursue justice beyond U.S. borders — you can run but you can’t hide,” said Special Agent in Charge Stacey Moy of the FBI San Diego Field Office.
• Once the young women responded to the group’s online ads, Pratt and the others would tell them that the jobs were for pornographic videos and not modeling gigs, according to court documents.

It was also believed that Andre Garcia might have been a previously-unknown individual named “Jonathan,” who the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) had been attempting to identify and locate for over a year. This individual had been “attempting to groom minors for sex trafficking,” which fit in with the DOJ’s filing. Garcia had reportedly been recruiting women for filming purposes up until his arrest in October of 2019. It was reported then that the contracts that he had been working with still had no mention of GirlsDoPorn or the videos ever being uploaded online.

When the women responded, they were told the ads were for pornographic videos, and they were pressured into taking part, according to various lawsuits and survivor testimonies. During the trial, Evie gets on the stand and states that in her pornography videos, she wasn’t forced to do anything and that everything she did was just an act, but that she did not consent to what Daniel and Matt did to her. She says that she knew testifying in court would open herself and her family to victim blaming and judgment, but she wants to send a message that adult film entertainers do not deserve to be assaulted.

GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys were sex trafficking operations whose leaders admitted that, from 2013 to 2019, they convinced victims to make adult videos by lying that their imagery would only be sold to private collectors abroad and not posted online. They’d then post the videos on the GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys websites, which presented themselves as consensual amateur adult sites. Pornhub listed the official Girls Do Porn channels as a “Content Partner”, and only removed it as a partner after the owners and employees of the ring—by then already embroiled in the civil trial—were charged with federal sex trafficking counts. The plaintiffs claim that Pornhub had a policy to never take action against Content Partner videos, and that videos’ popularity rather than the evidence of the victim’s lack of consent. “This defendant lured one victim after another with fake modeling ads, false promises and deceptive front companies, ultimately devolving to threats to coerce these women into making sex videos,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman.

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. Once the women discovered their videos were posted online, the website owners ignored requests to take the videos down and cut contact with the women altogether, Enright ruled. The women also alleged GirlsDoPorn’s owners shared links to their videos with people within the victims’ social circles in order to drive up website traffic.

Once the videos were posted online many victims contacted Garcia and his co-conspirators seeking to get their videos taken off the websites. As a part of the conspiracy, Garcia and others would at times coerce victims into completing the videos once they were underway. Garcia and other co-conspirators threatened to sue the victims, cancel flights home, and post the videos online, if the victims did not complete the sex videos.

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Others involved in the case have received prison sentences ranging from 4 to 20 years. Ruben Andre Garcia, the recruiter and male model, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on June 14, 2021.

• It reminded me most of Nell Dunn’s brilliant Talking to Women, which consists of the transcripts of conversations conducted between Dunn, a playwright and novelist living in London, and each of nine of her female friends in 1964.
• “If a woman agreed to make a video, members of the conspiracy paid to fly the woman to San Diego,” according to court documents.
• Pratt’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to USA TODAY’s message for comment on Wednesday.
• As teens and young adults develop their own sets of beliefs and values, these influences can be particularly important.

After stint on FBI’s Most Wanted List, GirlsDoPorn founder arrives in San Diego court

Several women described during his sentencing hearing how links to their videos were sent en masse to family members, friends and co-workers, sabotaging their employment prospects and ruining familial relationships to this day. One woman said she’s faced consistent harassment since her video was posted nine years ago, leading her to move and change her name. The woman said she’s about to graduate from college, but said that though “I’m proud to be the first in my family to go to college, when I graduate, it’s not going to be my name that’s called.”

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The only thing that knowing she’s “supposed to” seems to have done is make her disappointed in herself. Confessions like these throughout Porn reinforce the strength of Barton’s chosen format of intimate, private conversations. Sexting is not uncommon among even young teens; keep in mind that this behavior may seem commonplace and safe to your teen. Support your teen in setting a regular and consistent bedtime and provide a space away from their bedroom where they can set all devices overnight. Provide them with an alarm clock so they don’t have a need to keep their phone in their room.

Pornographic movie studios

The judge in that case found in favor of the women and handed down a $12.7 million judgment against Pratt, Wolfe, adult performer Ruben Andre Garcia and various business interests connected to Pratt. Prosecutors have alleged that Pratt and those who worked for him recruited young women online as models, but when the women arrived in San Diego, they were pressured to have sex on camera. The women were told the videos would go to private DVD collections overseas, but instead they were widely disseminated on the GirlsDoPorn network of sites, as well as free pornography sites.

Pornhub, which is owned by parent company Aylo (formerly MindGeek), uses a list of 34,000 banned terms, across multiple languages and with millions of combinations, to block searches for child abuse material, a spokesperson for the company says. It is one way Pornhub tries to combat illegal material, the spokesperson says, and is part of the company’s efforts aimed at user safety, after years of allegations it has hosted child exploitation and nonconsensual videos. When people in the UK have searched for any of the terms on Pornhub’s list, the warning message and chatbot have appeared. Although many children are using social media before they turn 13, that is the “official” age where most social media platforms allow users to create their own profiles. Research on the social, emotional, and mental health impacts of social media continues to develop — evidence is mixed on the negative and positive effects of using it and how dramatic those effects are.

The tool offers diverse and realistic AI avatars, supports multiple languages with natural voices, and has user-friendly interfaces. Details of that monitoring — part of a deferred prosecution agreement from the Pornhub network’s years of hosting hundreds of videos from the GirlsDoPorn sex-trafficking ring — have not been made public. A law enforcement source told BI last week that an announcement will be made soon. An ever-growing number of lawsuits by some 300 plaintiffs allege the site knowingly profited from videos of their abuse.

For example, a large-scale study by Andreassen et al. (2018) including 23,533 adults reported an association between narcissism and sex addiction. “It is outrageous. Reprehensible. Every polite phrase that you can use to describe conduct,” said attorney Ed Chapin, managing partner of Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP, which worked on the case. Chapin told NPR that in addition to offering financial compensation, the websites also have to take down the Internet postings and let the women know that “friends and loved ones may see it — so if you want to be paid money, then you’ve got to understand what the potential problems are.” In the scheme, the website GirlsDoPorn and other affiliated sites would offer thousands of dollars to women to participate in a pornographic video. They would fly a woman to San Diego, take her to a hotel room, and pressure her to sign a contract quickly without reading it.

Even after the women’s videos were released on the site, the victims said they were doxxed, and their personal info was released to the internet. Women also testified that the men refused to stop the porn shoots, and that they were threatened with withholding their hotel reservations and plane tickets they were going to use to return home. He and his co-conspirators are accused of posting internet ads about modeling jobs to lure young women before pressuring and manipulating them into shooting sex tapes. Investigators said they lied to the women, saying that the videos would not be widely disseminated because they were for a private collector overseas and they would remain anonymous. However, Girls Do Porn distributed the videos after they were shot, and they appeared on popular porn websites.

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She tried to change her appearance drastically to avoid being recognized. Jane Doe 5 was only 17 when she was recruited and asked to send nude pictures. Others said viewers had blackmailed or propositioned them, sent the explicit images to their parents and siblings and called them derogatory names online and in person. One woman said someone vandalized her car with male genitalia.

Sex Trafficking Survivor Speaks Out on Infamous ‘GirlsDoPorn’ Case, Reveals Horrors of Pornography Industry

AF-1 and AF-4 are explicitly identified as two of the 22 Jane Does. The statement revealed that Ruben Andre Garcia, 31, known by his performer name Andre Garcia, was arrested on Wednesday. Matthew Wolfe, 37, had already been taken into custody on Tuesday, October 8, by immigration officials and transferred to federal criminal custody.

• When she said she wanted to stop, Garcia and Wolfe made her feel like she was not free to leave.
• The site offered an entry point into the industry to Whitney Westgate, Sophia Leone, Scarlet Red, Layla London, Alexis Adams and others.
• She said she was told the video would go straight to DVD and be sold in New Zealand but found out the following year it had been posted to some of the most trafficked websites in the world.
• However, the videos were later distributed publicly via sites including Pornhub according to US Attorneys.
• Doe 16 pointed to her tone of voice and certain body movements that she said, for her, were not normal.

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But publishing a video like this would have been a more brazen act of doxing. The video was supposed to end with the text “These retarded lawyers and disquisting [sic] whores wasted 3 years of everyones [sic] time. Ask yourself how viral these videos will go now if nobody is controlling them… Good job.” Brewer also says that FBI agents “found evidence of efforts to harass and intimidate the victims and their attorneys.”

Los Angeles-Area Man Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud Over Bogus Adult Sites

• The new lawsuit alleges the company’s business partnership with GirlsDoPorn only ended because GirlsDoPorn ceased to exist amid a Department of Justice sex trafficking investigation.
• Pornhub provides you with unlimited free porn videos with the hottest adult performers.
• SAN DIEGO — A new week began in the civil case against GirlsDoPorn with a testimony by another former model, Jane Doe 7, detailing experiences with the company around October 2013.
• Garcia and other members of the conspiracy took active steps to ensure the victims did not find out that he and the other members of the conspiracy operated GDP and GDT.
• They were allegedly told that the job would be anonymous and that their videos would not be posted on the web, but were being made for DVDs of private collectors or far-flung markets.

The Senate of the Republic of Ireland — known by its Gaelic name Seanad Éireann — has endorsed an age verification bill introduced by a senator who said he was inspired by the U.S. state laws promoted by religious conservative anti-porn crusaders. And this morning, like clockwork, GirlsDoPorn added its latest video — business as usual. But that was a rosier, industry-sanitized version of what actually happened to the current Vixen Angel in those San Diego hotel rooms.

Jane (who Motherboard granted anonymity for her safety) walked into the sparse hotel room where a videographer waited with a camera arranged for shooting the bed. A makeup artist, a woman older than her, asked her what she was doing there. This is one of several moments she identifies, in retrospect, as when she felt that something might be wrong. Looking back, she said there are several of these moments.