Elegant Angel owner Patrick Collins has proposed setting up a fund for adult performers to help provide for their health and welfare.
The idea, he told AVN.com, occurred to him after reading about Jenna Jameson’s proposed relief fund for performers put out of work by the current production moratorium occasioned by the discovery of two HIV-positive performers.
“I applaud her initiative,” he said. “The people who are affected by this moratorium—from performers to makeup artists to still photographers—need money now. In the event we ever have this situation again, I would like to see us have a plan in place. A good way to start would be based on the model of the Free Speech Coalition,” with company owners paying a flat fee of $5,000 a year and a sliding scale for everyone else in the industry.
“The health and welfare of our performers is equally as important as free speech,” Collins said. “Out of the fund we would pay for their testing.”
The fund, he said, could provide health insurance for performers (if legally possible), as well as income in the event they couldn’t work. It would also fund projects such as databases that would facilitate testing and tracking of individuals from company to company within the same day. “We'd give that information to AIM and share it in a central database,” he said. An international testing system involving AIM could also be created.
Key to the success of such a project, Collins said, is support from fans and consumers. Members would be identified in the marketplace by a special logo on their packaging, websites and promotional materials. This would identify them to consumers as supporters of the fund and allow fans to support talent by purchasing product from association members.
A side benefit to the stickers is that they could help manufacturers track pirated product.
Collins said he was just throwing out these ideas in hopes of generating interest and hopes that other company owners and and industry members will offer feedback, and that someone will step foward to actually implement the ideas. “I am not the guy that is going to organize this thing,” he said. “This is not my strength. This needs to be administrated by a group of very dedicated and loyal people who want to help the industry. All I’m doing is contributing the ideas—and money. I can do that.”
