Girls Gone Wild isn’t child porn according to a circuit judge in Florida.
Judge Michael Overstreet determined that a videotape of an underage girl exposing her breasts is not child pornography, citing a Florida state law that requires physical contact to have been made with the underage girl for “sexual conduct” to have taken place.
Overstreet’s made his decision while determining that the defense had a right to copy a tape that had been confiscated from the rented condominium of Joe Francis, owner of Mantra Entertainment, the makers of the Girls Gone Wild series.
The tape in question had been confiscated as evidence against Francis and a few of his employees last April, when they were arrested on over 40 charges, stemming from the taping of a Girls Gone Wild video at Panama Beach, Florida.
The prosecutor in the case against Francis had tried to prohibit the defense team from copying the tape in question claiming it was child pornography. The defense wished to have a copy of the tape so that they could examine it and see if the contained evidence that might exonerate Francis.
"We have been telling the prosecution for months that Joe Francis did not break the law by filming girls voluntarily exposing themselves," Aaron Dyer, the lawyer representing Francis said in a statement released to the media last night. "Today's ruling by Judge Overstreet is further evidence that what we have been arguing is true."
Dyer predicts that the tapes will undermine most of the charges against Francis, and says that the tapes will prove that the prosecution overstated the number of girls involved.
"The arrest and subsequent prosecution of Joe Francis has been nothing more than a thinly-veiled harassment campaign. This is a real abuse of the American justice system,” Dyer said.
Bill Horn, the vice president of communications for Mantra Entertainment said that the ruling wouldn’t change much for Mantra – because the charges hadn’t changed much for the company to begin with.
“We always have, and always will continue, to operate our business as usual,” Horn told AVN.com, while boarding a plane to the next Girls Gone Wild destination.
“It’s spring break right now and the next 24-hours are going to be crazy,” he added.
Francis and his crew say that the underage girls lied about their ages; the prosecutors say that Francis knowingly coerced underage girls to appear in his videos.
