After a years-long legal battle and a three-month trial, a San Diego judge ruled in favor of 22 unnamed women suing the porn production company Girls Do Porn. The class-action lawsuit was filed in 2016, after nearly two dozen models alleged in a complaint that the company had defrauded and coerced them into performing adult scenes. The women, identified only as Jane Does 1-22, accused the company of using a web of shell companies and fake references to lure young, low-income models into porn under the guise of anonymity. In actuality, the videos were published online, where the plaintiffs were quickly identified, doxxed and harassed.
Thursday evening, Judge Kevin Enright ruled that Girls Do Porn and several affiliates had committed intentional misrepresentation, fraudulent concealment, false promise, unfair and deceptive business practices, and fraudulent transfer. Enright awarded the plaintiffs a total of $12.775 million in compensatory and punitive damages—$9.5 million for the profits Girls Do Porn made off of the womens’ likenesses and $3.3 million for the emotional distress it caused.
“They’ve all been sort of crying joyfully,” said John O’Brien, an attorney for the 22 Jane Does. “They’re so relieved, thanking us many times over—just overjoyed with the result. We’re going to do everything we can to get their images down and to get these guys to stop practicing the way they were.”
The company Girls Do Porn, which The Daily Beast has covered extensively, was founded in 2009 by New Zealand national Michael Pratt. The website’s premise hinged on hiring first-time models who never intended to go into porn. As a result, Pratt needed a steady supply of inexperienced women ages 18 to 23. The company posted advertisements on websites like Craigslist, putting out calls for adult modeling, offering between $2,500 and $5,000 for a single shoot. Crucially, they would promise the candidates that their identity would remain anonymous, and that the videos would be distributed only on DVD to private buyers overseas. To help convince the women, Pratt hired women to pose as “reference models,” or women who claimed to have filmed with the company before and assured the nervous teens and twentysomethings that they were in good hands.
“Defendants take considerable, calculated steps to falsely assure prospective models that their videos will never be posted online, come to light in the United States, or be seen by anyone who might know them,” Enright wrote in his proposed Statement of Decision. “Defendants’ assurances of privacy and security are reinforced by paid ‘references’—women hired who are or pose as previous models and (in accordance with a script) provide new recruits with false comfort that the experience is safe and enjoyable, and that the videos have never appeared online or been discovered by anyone in the models’ lives.”
After the candidates were sufficiently persuaded, Pratt would fly them to San Diego, bring them to a hotel room, offer them alcohol or weed, and have them sign contracts. The documents were worded vaguely, and the Girls Do Porn employees told models not to read too closely, promising that the fine print merely affirmed what they already knew: anonymous, overseas distribution, totally secret. Then, they would shoot scenes. Often, the models’ pay was docked due to some physical flaw—a tattoo, weight gain, a haircut. Most of the plaintiffs received far less in compensation than they were told at the outset.
After a few weeks, the footage would appear online—both to the GirlsDoPorn website, and to free “tube” sites where users could watch free clips that led to their paid subscription service. Immediately, the women were identified, doxxed, and subjected to, as Enright put it, a “deliberate campaign by online ‘trolls’ to identify and humiliate women who appear in pornographic videos.”
“Stemming from a perverse fascination with (and perhaps disdain for) women who appear in pornography, anonymous internet users (‘trolls’) congregate on online forums such as PornWikiLeaks.com, NameThatPorn.com, and 8chan.net, to identify these women by name and glean personal information about them,” Enright wrote. “The trolls share the information they find—including a model’s name, biographical information, links to her social media accounts, and other contact information—on the forum, and then the harassment begins. Armed with the woman’s social media and contact information, some trolls spend their time sending links to her video to people connected to her on social media. Other trolls contact the models personally to attack, bully, and shame them, or to comment on their videos and proposition them.”
In trial, the women argued Pratt and GirlsDoPorn deliberately leaked their identities and personal information by sending the footage to their friends and families, much like a direct-marketing promotion, to ensure the footage “went viral” in the actresses’ hometowns. The judge found that, at best, Pratt and his colleagues both knew that harassment was “inevitable,” directly profited from it, and hid it from the models they hired. “At worst,” Enright wrote, “Defendants encouraged and facilitated this outing process and even participated directly.” The judge went on to point out that the models’ names came out in a manner that “strongly suggests” that Pratt was involved. For one, internet history records showed that on multiple occasions, several models were “outed” at once—revealing their names, pictures, email addresses, social media, and other personal information in one dump. For another, after Pratt purchased the domain for one of the most prominent forums, Porn WikiLeaks, he didn’t remove the doxxing pages for seven months. The forum only came down eight days after the class action lawsuit was filed.
The judge also ruled on Pratt’s complex network of shell companies and businesses, finding that Pratt and his colleagues had “used shell entities to obfuscate corporate relationships and hide assets.” Pratt admitted to affiliation with 10 businesses entities, but was linked to at least five more. Pratt and his colleagues denied any knowledge of the latter five, perhaps because all five were established in the Republic of Vanuatu, a “tiny, remote island in the South Pacific,” as Enright put it, and a known tax haven. In trial, the plaintiffs’ attorneys showed evidence that Pratt had transferred “valuable assets” to the Vanuatu entities over the course of several years. In response, according to the statement of decision, the defense argued the transfers were intended to “to fix ‘mistakes’ in the ‘corporate structure’ and that ‘this is how it was supposed to be all along.’” Enright found that response unpersuasive. “The evidence at trial supports a finding that all entities are a single business enterprise,” he wrote. “Therefore, the Court treats them as one.”
During the trial, Pratt was supposed to testify. But when he was scheduled to appear, his attorneys announced that the porn producer had fled the country and failed to notify them of his whereabouts. In court, one of his colleagues testified that the producer had gone “on holiday.” Media outlets reported that Pratt had returned to New Zealand, but his location remains unknown. In the meantime, a federal attorney unsealed an indictment charging Pratt and three colleagues with several charges, including sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion, sex trafficking of a minor, and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. Two of Pratt’s colleagues were arrested and remain in federal custody. Pratt was named a fugitive. If convicted, all could face life in prison and a $250,000 fine. O’Brien, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said he doesn’t know what effect the ruling will have on the federal case.
“The judge voided the agreements that the defendants claimed the girls had signed. He’s ordered them to return all their images and make changes to their business practices—although, well, two of them are in prison now. Pratt is on the lam,” he said. “Certainly, a lot of the facts are the same and the federal case is built on the same set of lies that we took to trial. But the federal authorities are doing their own thing.”
