SAN DIEGO, Calif.—The ongoing civil trial where 22 Jane Does are suing the website GirlsDoPorn, its owner Michael Pratt and two of its employees may have to be put on hiatus. Why? The U.S. Attorney's office for San Diego on Thursday unsealed an indictment charging Pratt, videographer Matthew Wolfe, actor/director Andre Garcia and Pratt's assistant Valerie Moser with federal sex trafficking charges—and it appears that this may be the first indictment obtained under the "Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act," aka FOSTA, which was signed into law in April of 2018. FOSTA is currently under challenge in federal court in the District of Columbia.
The news caused Superior Court Judge Kevin Enright to suspend proceedings in the Jane Doe trial until at least next Tuesday, when he ordered attorneys for both sides to a status conference. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, attorneys for the defendants have asked for the trial to be suspended "until the criminal case has been resolved"—a situation that could easily take months or even years—while attorneys for the 22 plaintiffs, several of whom have already testified, want the civil trial to continue, estimating that there are only two weeks' worth of testimony yet to be presented.
"We are not 100 percent certain how this will affect our trial," plaintiffs' attorney Ed Chaplin said before court recessed on Thursday. "The law says the judge has discretion to stay a civil case while the criminal matter is resolved. That means the judge has the option to put our trial on hold until the criminal matters are wrapped up. We will know more after court today. We are currently about two weeks away from finishing and would like to have our case resolved without delay.
"Irrespective of this federal criminal indictment, we are committed to moving forward with the civil trial that has been underway for eight weeks," he added in a statement. "We want to get justice for the women that these men harmed as well as damages for the devastating events they lived through and have had to deal with ever since."
Wolfe was arrested on Tuesday and Garcia on Wednesday; both pled "not guilty" at their arraignment on Thursday. Pratt, however, remains in New Zealand and at press time had not been taken into custody.
"Pratt is a fugitive," the indictment notes.
All three men are charged with engaging in sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion plus conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. Moser, who has yet to appear in federal court, is charged only with conspiracy.
The FBI has also raided the GirlsDoPorn offices in downtown San Diego looking for evidence, but the results of the raid have not been revealed.
In a sense, the alleged actions of the federal defendants is ready-made for FOSTA. The company recruited women via Craigslist, and though the ads reportedly did not specify that the women were being recruited for hardcore sex scenes, that was in fact the case—and the situation was made even worse by the fact, according to testimony in the civil trial, that the women were plied with alcohol and cannabis, that they were forced to sign contracts for their scenes without being given time to read them thoroughly or consult an attorney regarding them, were verbally promised several things that either did not appear in the contracts or were in direct contradiction to the contracts' wording—and many were not paid the agreed-upon prices for their scenes.
Moreover, according to an article on Courthouse News, the federal prosecutors charge that the women were" threatened with legal action or outing if they failed to perform" in the contracted-for sex scenes—a scenario that fits well with FOSTA's criminalizing the use of the Internet to "knowingly assist, facilitate or support" sex trafficking. In addition, GirlsDoPorn had hired women to pose as satisfied models who also did hardcore scenes for the company, making that another factor in the trafficking allegations.
"Members of the conspiracy assured the women that their friends and families would never learn that the women had appeared in the videos," the indictment reads in part. "To help convince them, Pratt paid other young women working at his direction, including Moser, to act as references or provide false assurances to the women that, if they filmed a video, the video would not be posted online."
The Courthouse News article also notes, "Any additional victims of the alleged crime are asked to call the San Diego FBI at (858) 320-1800"—and considering how often GirlsDoPorn reportedly used their scheme, it's possible that many more defrauded women may be discovered.
The Justice Department has issued a press release regarding the indictments, which may be read here.
Pictured, l-r: Andre Garcia, Matthew Wolfe and Michael Pratt
