LOS ANGELES—Adult starlet Hadley Viscara accused LA Direct Models owner Derek Hay of customarily reducing her pay through a series of fees that left her with little money despite working consistently on various adult shoots. The accusation was made Thursday during an administrative hearing at the California Labor Commissioner’s Office in the case filed by five adult performers who claim the agency and Hay had mismanaged and abused them.
The hearing, held at the downtown Los Angeles office of the Department of Industrial Relations Division of Labor Standards Enforcement for the State of California, was presided over by Special Hearing Officer Patricia Salazar.
Viscara, who now goes by the name Hadley Mason, told Salazar that upon signing with LA Direct in 2017, she had moved from Arizona and into Hay’s model house, where several models lived, and quickly began accumulating a series of charges that repeatedly left her with little or no money after they were deducted from her paycheck from a number of adult film shoots.
“That’s false. I didn’t get any of that money,” she told her attorney Allan B. Gelbard during the proceeding after he asked about the accuracy of an invoice from LA Direct that revealed she was paid $1,200 for a Team Skeet shoot. “They deducted my rent, which I wasn’t told about in the beginning, and bunch of other fees.”
Likewise, subsequent shoots with director/performer Ike Diezel and several others paying $1,000 or more netted the starlet zero dollars after fee deductions and other costs.
Viscara told the judge that after she expressed an interest in becoming an adult performer and joining LA Direct Models, Hay flew her out to Las Vegas, where he lives, in order to meet her and then sent her to a local photographer for professional photos before flying her out to Los Angeles, where LA Direct is based.
“I was under the impression that I wouldn’t be charged for those flights; otherwise I wouldn’t have gone, because I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “But they charged me later. … Including the photo shoot.”
Viscara said she was afraid if she brought her cat to the model house, he would damage Hay’s furniture and told him she would de-claw the animal, but said Hay told her he opposes de-clawing and instead agreed to buy her a cat tree for the cat to scratch. “I thought it was a gift. But I got charged for it,” she said.
It got so bad financially for Viscara that she had to borrow $300 from LA Direct’s accountant to pay her bills, but it only added to the fees that would be deducted from her paychecks.
Ultimately, Viscara left LA Direct and quit the adult industry altogether.
Adult starlet Shay Evans, who today performs under the name Gia Milana, returned to court after testifying a day earlier, claiming she and other LA Direct models were pressured by Hay to attend parties where they were groped, manhandled and not given proper security.
“I was groped, the men were drunk, they didn’t know why I was there, they propositioned us and they wanted me to have sex with them or the other girls. It was a very unsafe environment,” she said. “It was very scary.”
Despite her protests, Evans said, LA Direct continued to try to book her for similar parties.
On the procedural side, Judge Patricia Salazar denied a motion by Hay’s attorney, Richard W. Freeman, Jr., who had asked to subpoena the petitioners for their communications with the media, which included AVN Managing Editor Dan Miller and KNBC journalist Dan Przygoda. Freeman added that he will likely file another request for the information.
“An NBC reporter and a reporter from AVN had contact with the petitioners shortly after the initial petition was filed with regard to some of their comment and their testimony,” Freeman said. “It had been my position that we should be entitled to receive the communications between the petitioners and the media with regard to when the interviews would be conducted, where they were to be conducted, and how and whether they were going to provide materials to the statements they were going to provide the press.”
As for the testimony in court, Freeman said he is looking forward to presenting evidence that will contradict the allegations against Hay and LA Direct Models.
“It’s still the petitioners presenting their testimony and witnesses they have, and when they’re all done with that—including asking questions they’ll have—we’ll have witnesses and material that is contradictory to what they’ve offered.”
The hearing continues Friday and then resumes on Nov. 4.
