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The complaint also alleged that Andre Garcia had sexually assaulted at least two of these women, either before or after the recording of their videos. In one case, he had told the victim that he needed to take her for a “test drive” before shooting a video the following day, and in another, he told her to “stop being a whiny little bitch” when she asked to take a break because of the pain she was in. Another woman altogether claimed that she was forced into performing oral sex on Garcia during their shoot, and afterward, was driven by Garcia to an isolated location where he had forcibly raped her in the backseat of the vehicle. Multiple women also claimed that Garcia had given them STDs, which he had failed to inform them about. Brian Holm, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, called this tactic “undue harassment,” and thankfully the judge agreed. Pratt victimized hundreds of young women, federal prosecutors said, including at least one girl under the age of 18.
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- Another defendant, Alexander Brian Foster, pleaded guilty to creating a video meant to harass several women who sued GirlsDoPorn and was sentenced to just over one year in prison.
- Garcia told these women that the videos would be published only on DVDs and sold overseas.
- In late July, one of Pratt’s coconspirators, 40-year-old Matthew Isaac Wolfe, pleaded guilty to committing sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion.
- “If we are going to be inclusive, we need to be intentional about the language we use and making sure that it doesn’t accidentally stigmatize people who work in the porn industry or people who do sex work, because they also can become victims of the same thing we’re fighting against,” Buster said.
- Garcia will be ordered to pay restitution in an amount to be determined by the court at sentencing.
When the women declined to participate in the shoots because they feared the footage would be uploaded online, the group lied and told them the videos would “only be distributed outside the U.S. on DVD or to supposed private collectors overseas,” the documents said. Lured to San Diego by online ads seeking models for photo shoots, nearly two dozen women say they were pressured to sign dense contracts in hotel rooms where they were given drugs and alcohol and pushed into doing porn. A short time later, that footage was posted on GirlsDoPorn.com and other popular websites, where many of the women said viewers found and published their full names online, resulting in severe harassment. Prosecutors say numerous women were lured by the defendants through the promise of modeling jobs, flown to San Diego, then were threatened with lawsuits and canceled return flights home if they backed out of filming pornographic videos. SAN DIEGO (CNS) – A videographer for the now-defunct San Diego-based pornographic website GirlsDoPorn.com was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison for taking part in a sex-trafficking conspiracy that coerced hundreds of women to appear in online pornographic videos under false pretenses. He allegedly did so by telling the women and girls that they would be paid $3,000 to $5,000 for a one-day pornographic video shoot.
- One woman said she’s faced consistent harassment since her video was posted nine years ago, leading her to move and change her name.
- So the footage from that horrific night — which was uploaded to the platform without her consent — was downloaded millions of times.
- She said attempted to exit the vehicle, but couldn’t, and Garcia climbed on top of her, physically preventing her from exiting.
- 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.
- It’s not all that surprising, then, that many young women grow up having an aversion to their periods and feeling pressure to shave their pubic hair, entering adulthood all too often having never uttered the word “labia” and without knowing what a clitoris is, where it is, and/or what to do with it.
How to talk or write about this abuse
It became clear to this young woman that this was porn, which she had no interest in, despite the promise of good pay for very little work. She told police that after filming concluded on a subsequent photo and video shoot, Garcia pestered her with invasive questions. She said Garcia asked her to be his girlfriend, then eventually became irate and forcibly pushed her down onto a bed and sexually assaulted her. Days later, Garcia showed up at her boyfriend’s house and refused to leave until she threatened to call the police. The woman told her parents and her sister that she had been raped, and her parents encouraged her to tell the police. On Oct. 10, the operators of popular pornography website Girls Do Porn were charged with trafficking and conspiracy in a federal criminal complaint.
Abuse isn’t pornography
Like the other charges, Pratt has pleaded not guilty to this allegation through his lawyers, but he remains a wanted fugitive to this day, and his whereabouts remain unknown after more than a year. 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. The trial lasted over three months, beginning in August of 2019 and finally wrapping up that November.
If the women tried to leave, the group would either force the girls to “perform certain sex acts” or threaten them with lawsuits and flight cancelations, the documents continued. Throughout the alleged conspiracy, Pratt and the co-defendants recruited hundreds of young women from around the U.S. and Canada who were aspiring models, court records show. 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. Theodore Wilfred Gyi, 44, pleaded guilty to a federal count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking for his role in the website’s operations, which prosecutors say involved lying to women who appeared in the videos by telling them their scenes would only be distributed on DVDs to private customers.
She had been applying to local jobs in the area with little luck and decided to try this out in order to help support herself through college. She sent an email to the address provided on the job posting, attaching a few photos and some information about herself. This young woman, it turns out, not only participated in pageants but had won a couple of the most high profile among them – representing her home state in the Miss Teen International and Miss Teen USA competition that same year.
He also falsely assured at least two women that their videos wouldn’t be posted online after knowing other women’s videos had already been uploaded to the Internet, the plea agreement states. Prosecutors say the website’s operators led women to believe the videos they appeared in would be distributed only to private customers living outside of the country, rather than proliferated online, despite always intending to post the videos on the internet. The Free Speech Coalition’s Stabile also suggests substituting “sexually explicit” for “pornographic” when describing images, as it is more precise. Many people in the industry prefer “adult content” instead of pornography, Stabile said, because it emphasizes the media is made for adults, by adults. For example, the federal law banning child sexual abuse material includes references to computer-generated imagery, said Souras from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. That has come in handy for prosecuting illegal AI-generated imagery, even though the legislators were originally referring to the potential of simpler tools like Photoshop.
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. Another woman said, “The fear of being recognized in public never goes away,” while another said the continuous messages and threats she receives from anonymous people online are “constant reminders of the worst time in my life.” Many said they were pressured into performing sex acts they’d previously refused to do. Some said they were told they would not be allowed to leave, or their flights home would be canceled, if they did not complete filming. SAN DIEGO – Matthew Isaac Wolfe was sentenced in federal court today to 14 years in prison for his role in a conspiracy with Michael Pratt, owner of the website…