SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Testimony in the months-long trial where 22 Jane Does are suing the website GirlsDoPorn.com, as well as its owner Michael Pratt, videographer Matthew Wolfe, actor/director Reuben "Andre" Garcia and office assistant Valorie Moser, came to an end yesterday, and attorneys for both sides began their closing arguments, which reportedly will continue today in San Diego Superior Court before Judge Kevin Enright.
The primary allegations in the trial were that the 22 plaintiffs each were recruited by ads on Craigslist from companies such as "BeginModeling.com" to become models and then flown to San Diego to seal the deal. However, when the women arrived, they learned that what was actually expected of them was that they would perform in hardcore videos with Garcia, although they were promised that the videos would never be seen in the U.S., with Garcia and others claiming that the footage would be put on DVD and sold either in Europe or Asia. Garcia and Wolfe then had the women sign voluminous contracts, which the women, who had been "relaxed" with alcohol and pot, claim they were given almost no time to read. Following the defendants having shot one or more hardcore scenes with the women, the footage was posted on GirlsDoPorn.com and licensed to other adult sites including Pornhub—a fact which many of the women found out only after their scenes were called to their attention by parents, relatives, co-workers or college friends. The 22 Jane Doe plaintiffs sued the company, several shell companies affiliated with Girls Do Porn, and the four individual defendants for several counts of fraud, including fraudulent concealment and fraudulent transfer, as well as intentional misrepresentation, false promise and breach of contract.
The defense had presented its first witness last Thursday, Tara Burns, the first of only three announced witnesses, who shot a number of videos for a GirlsDoPorn-affiliated website, MomPOV.com, beginning in 2010. On the witness stand, under questioning from defense attorney George Rikos, who represents defendant Domi Publications, and its owner, Douglas Wiederhold, Burns recounted how she first came to Weiderhold's attention through an ad on Backpage.com, from which she was recruited to make hardcore videos for MomPOV.com, and which she said she knew would be posted to a "members-only" website.
But once plaintiffs' attorney Brian Holm got to ask Burns questions, the differences between her experiences and those of the 22 Jane Doe plaintiffs involved in the suit became clear. Most notably, Burns had already been a cam model before hooking up with Weiderhold/MomPOV.com, and had shot some hardcore photo layouts as well. According to an article by Courthouse News' Bianca Bruno, Holm suggested during his questioning that MomPOV was created to “recruit women already in the porn industry” and did not identify itself as an “amateur-only” website seeking models who had never previously appeared in any hardcore material. Moreover, Burns' experiences with MomPOV.com preceded the Jane Does' recruitment by at least three years.
It also came out in testimony that Burns had acted as a "reference model" for MomPOV.com, recruiting other women and assuring them that access to their scenes could only be had by website members, but that in reality, the scenes showed up on several platforms, including for free on Pornhub.
After Burns finished testifying, the defense attorneys, including lead counsel Daniel Kaplan, were reportedly going to offer two "expert" witnesses, but if they did in fact testify, such appearances, as well as what they may have testified to, has not been reported upon.
Rather, closing arguments began yesterday, with lead plaintiff attorney Ed Chapin describing his clients as victims of "male domination" and a "fraudulent scheme honed over time" in which the defendants had "consciously covered their tracks by working hard to avoid a paper trail." He also attributed the allegedly dishonest claims Pratt, Wolfe and Garcia made to the women to the fact that the defendants were "greedy and want money."
"They know if they told the truth the women would run,” Chapin said, noting that the Does had all testified during trial that if they had known their scenes would be posted online, they would not have agreed to do them.
"The men ran a lucrative business enterprise built on lies and the exploitation of vulnerable young women,” Chapin charged, adding that the women "were harassed, bullied, shamed, and blackmailed" after their videos were released on Girls Do Porn and other sites.
"These women have suffered hellaciously from this dastardly scheme ... the severity of which goes to the most private and most personal subject matter,” he intoned.
Regarding the pressure that Wolfe and Garcia had put on the women not to read the contracts they were signing, Chapin described the contracts as "intentionally verbose," and read to the Court the first sentence of one of them, which was 140 words long. Chapin also asked Enright to find the contracts unenforceable due to the fact that most if not all of the women were high on alcohol or pot when they signed them.
When it became the defense's turn to argue, Kaplan first played for the Court an edited compilation of the plaintiffs reading their model releases for the video camera, and argued that none of the women appeared to be less than sober during the reading, and that the claims that they were high was actually an attempt to express regret for having appeared in the videos and for failing to take responsibility for what had happened to them once the videos were posted.
"The plaintiffs are adult women who have the responsibility to make adult decisions for themselves and they must be held responsible for their own decisions and actions," Kaplan stated. "Adults make good decisions and adults make bad decisions. These were bad decisions for these plaintiffs."
Kaplan also charged that many of the women were no strangers to porn, with some having allegedly been cam models and strippers, and had watched porn online before performing in their scenes. He also charged that Jane Doe 1, who had just entered law school when she shot for Girls Do Porn, had recruited the rest of the plaintiffs to enter the lawsuit.
"They found the 22 who were willing to lie. They found the 22 who were willing to parrot the statement," Kaplan said. "The women assumed the risk. They don’t get a pass because they’re young. They don’t get a pass because they acted childishly."
Once closing arguments are completed, Judge Enright, who heard the case without a jury, will render a decision, though it may take several weeks for that to happen.
Meanwhile, in other Girls Do Porn news, the same day Tara Burns was being questioned in the civil trial, U.S. attorneys were in federal court in San Diego adding to the sex-trafficking charges that they had already filed against Pratt, Wolfe, Garcia and Moser, by charging Prall alone with production of child pornography and sex trafficking of a minor.
According to this most recent indictment, Pratt attempted to "employ, use, persuade, induce, entice, and coerce a 16-year-old minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct," and that he "harbored, transported, provided, obtained, and maintained …" the girl, all to his financial benefit.
"That's in relation to an apparent incident in 2012, which is a year before the women involved in the civil lawsuit started working with Pratt and his employees," Bianca Bruno said in a podcast interview for National Public Radio, "and this was before the [Jane Doe] case was filed in 2016, so it's a fairly old charge, but apparently he induced a 16-year-old to fly to San Diego to shoot a porn video with him. It's not clear exactly if it was with Girls Do Porn but it was with him and the creation of his videos."
The NPR host then asked Bruno how much prison time Pratt is facing?
"He could face life in prison," she stated.
In a recent episode of his late night variety show, Stephen Colbert stated, after visiting New Zealand, that, "New Zealand is one of the greatest places on earth. The people are incredible, the landscapes are absolutely breathtaking, it's home to both Lord and Lord of the Rings. In fact, there are no predators in the whole country, including no snakes."
But Colbert might want to revise that last statement, considering that New Zealand is not only the birthplace of Girls Do Porn owner Michael Pratt, it's also the place to which Pratt reportedly fled just before trial—but he may not be there for long.
"The child sex trafficking and porn charges were added last week and basically that is a charge that's subject to the extradition treaty with the U.S. and New Zealand," Bruno told NPR. "It's believed he's there and so the hope is that he'll come here and face charges in federal court but as of today, it's not clear where he is."
Another hearing on the federal charges facing the defendants will take place in early December.
