SAN DIEGO, Calif.—The bench trial of the civil lawsuit in which 22 Jane Does are suing the principals of the hardcore website GirlsDoPorn.com is now in its fourth week before Judge Kevin Enright, and so far there's been surprisingly little coverage in the news media about it, considering that juicy sex-related dramas are usually very popular. But one scrap of interest did filter through: Michael Pratt, GirlsDoPorn's owner, has reportedly fled the country, even though he remains under subpoena to testify.
"We have been informed that [Pratt] is no longer in the jurisdiction and is no longer available to testify, even though he is under court order to be here in court," lead plaintiffs' attorney Ed Chapin told NBC-7 San Diego.
Aside from the news about Pratt, an internet search reveals that just one article on the trial has published in the last two weeks, on Law.com. That article delves into the testimony given on September 12 by the woman who started it all, Jane Doe 1, who gave details regarding how her supposedly anonymous appearance in hardcore porn scenes for GirlsDoPorn led to her abandoning a promising legal career, deep-sixed more than one romantic relationship, and impelled her to attempt suicide twice.
As those who've been keeping up with the case know, the 22 plaintiffs all claim that they were tricked into performing hardcore scenes for the company with the promise that the footage would never be seen in the U.S., but instead would be sold on DVD in Europe and Asia, and that the women's real identities would not be revealed. Instead, GirlsDoPorn published the scenes on its own website, reportedly sold the footage to other adult sites including Pornhub, and leaked the women's identities to PornWikiLeaks, which published them for anyone to find.
However, testimony took a nasty turn last Thursday when defense attorney Daniel Kaplan, upon eliciting from Doe 1 that when she was first contacted in 2015 by GirlsDoPorn to appear in what turned out to be three hardcore scenes, she had been living rent free at the Palm Hotel in Las Vegas, thanks to her relationship with its owner, George Maloof. Doe 1 stated under oath that while living there, she had spent her time interning at a Vegas law firm, having recently passed the bar, with intentions to become an attorney herself.
But Kaplan saw a darker reason for Doe 1's free room.
“You were working there as a prostitute, weren’t you?” Kaplan charged.
That brought an immediate objection from Chapin: “This is outrageous! He has absolutely no evidence of that.”
Judge Enright sustained the objection, but Doe replied nevertheless: “The answer is no. I worked at a law firm, and I worked really hard there.”
Doe 1 further testified that it was only a few weeks after she threatened to sue GirlsDoPorn, owner Michael Pratt, videographer Matthew Wolfe and actor/director Ruben "Andre" Garcia, that photos of herself, links to her Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts, and info on her family and employer popped up on PornWikiLeaks, apparently allowing strangers to proposition her sexually via text message.
"One emailed the student body president of her law school, asking if there were 'any other girls of the bar who want to shoot a video,'" Law.com's Scott Graham reported.
Doe 1 also testified that she believed that Pratt, using the pseudonym "Ann Fairchild," had sent her harassing messages, and sent similar ones to her sister, her employer and even her undergraduate soccer coach—an answer to which Kaplan objected, but Chapin assured the judge that he would be presenting private investigators' testimony backing up the claims.
On cross-examination, Kaplan did his best to attack Doe 1's claims, pointing to photos on Doe's Instagram account showing her enjoying trips to England, Switzerland, Colombia, Colorado and even Beverly Hills, thus "proving" that Doe 1's life "was not ruined."
Kaplan then questioned Doe 1 further about the prostitution allegations, and she responded that in fact Garcia had asked her to "admit" to prostitution during one of the videos she filmed, but that she refused "because it wasn't true."
Her attorney objected, stating, "If they have somebody [with knowledge of Doe 1's prostitution], they’re sandbagging us, and I want to know who it is."
Kaplan claimed to have a "good-faith basis" for the prostitution questions, but apparently one witness who won't be testifying about that—or anything else—is Garcia himself, reportedly because he feared facing criminal charges in connection with the GirlsDoPorn shoots.
But perhaps the most interesting thing that happened that day was after court had recessed and the attorneys for both sides discussed taking a last-minute deposition of Pratt. The outcome of that discussion wasn't reported—and now Pratt's nowhere to be found. What a coincidence!
UPDATE: Kaplan, Pratt's attorney, told NBC San Diego that Pratt's exit from the U.S. had nothing to do with the trial.
"The trial date was uncertain for a number of months and the case has been going on for three years," Kaplan said. "People still have their lives to lead, including the defendants."
But Pratt is still scheduled to testify sometime during the coming weeks, and plaintiffs' attorney Chapin is concerned that Pratt may still make himself unavailable.
"I have never had this happen before," Chapin stated. "We are going to be running it to ground and asking the court for whatever relief we can get."
