In what is now the third week of trial for a massive San Diego class action lawsuit, five of the 22 plaintiffs have testified against the adult film company Girls Do Porn, seeking $22 million in damages for what they allege was a pattern of coercion, misrepresentation, or fraud. (Girls Do Porn has repeatedly denied any misconduct).
Judging by the first five testimonies, the stories are remarkably similar.
These were young women, strapped and looking for work on Craigslist. They found ads for modeling and filled out questionnaires with their age, measurements, and photos. When they later discovered the gig was for porn, they were assured the footage would not go online. It would go only to private collectors in Australia and the U.K.. They flew or drove to San Diego and shot short scenes in a hotel. After, they were told their bruises, weight or tattoos had reduced the agreed fee, and were underpaid by up to several thousand dollars. Months later, their videos were posted online. They were then outed, harassed, and doxxed.
“Obviously, each plaintiff is unique, but there’s a recurring theme or themes,” Judge Kevin A. Enright told the court on Tuesday morning. “It’s not like we are talking about different car accidents. We’re talking about similar—from the plaintiffs’ point of view—themes and claims and allegations and a lot of similarity. A lot of differences, but a lot of similarity.”
But Tuesday, after the fifth plaintiff finished her testimony, some new details emerged. Like most of the others, this woman, identified only as Jane Doe 17, was young when she first encountered Girls Do Porn in August 2015. She was 19, in school at San Diego State, and about to transfer to the University of Arizona. She had modeled for years, mostly through ads on Craigslist, and needed money for rent and tuition. While looking for more work, she found a listing titled, “Preppy college girl. Make 6K.” It linked to a website called Beginmodeling.com, where Doe 17 saw images of girls, smiling and fully clothed. Like her peers, Doe 17 spoke first with a representative, who offered her $4,000 for a film shoot and $1,000 for a photoshoot, and later with a female reference, identified as Kaylin Wright, who assured her the team was trustworthy.
Unlike previous plaintiffs, Doe 17 claimed in court testimony that she had not realized the shoot would be pornographic until after she arrived. When asked what she thought the “film” shoot indicated, Doe 17 told the court, “if anything, tasteful nudity. I didn’t think anything of it. It never crossed my mind. It was never mentioned—pornography or anything.”
According to Doe, one morning in August 2015, she met a Girls Do Porn employee, who identified himself as “Stephen,” at a San Diego hotel called the Omni. They drove around, stopped at the Fashion Valley Mall to have her makeup done, and wound up back at the hotel. Stephen left to grab her a sandwich at a fish shop down the street, and Doe 17 got dressed. A male model came in and smoked a joint. By noon, Stephen returned. “That is when he casually mentioned me shooting a pornography,” Doe 17 said. “He was kind of just like, ‘All right, this is what we’re going to be doing, these are the positions you are going to do.’ I immediately said no.”
She then alleges to have heard all the standard stuff: where the videos would be, where they would go, how the company had worked with multiple NFL cheerleaders and women who are Instagram-famous, how the video would be sold only as a DVD overseas in Australia.
But Doe 17 claimed she didn’t change her answer until the guys got “very agitated” and “said that [she] was wasting their time and money from being there.” At that point, she relented. “I didn’t know what would happen if I left. I didn’t know if they would post the nude pictures that I had sent him prior anywhere. They had offered me another 4,000 on top of that to do the video, on top of the thousand that they promised me for the photo shoot that I was supposed to be taking. And before I was convinced to do the video, I was given one cranberry vodka.”
Two months later, Doe 17 saw a friend from high school had tagged her in an Instagram post. It was a picture of Doe 17 on the hotel bed posted to the Girls Do Porn page. Under the thumbnail, the caption read: Coming Soon. “It was the worst thing ever,” she said. “Because I had to anticipate my video coming out.”
The next day, Doe 17 filed a police report. She hoped there was a way to prevent the tape from being released. In her view, the deliberate lack of transparency had prevented her from giving informed consent. “The videos being up, I thought that was a lie. I do believe that in some way I was raped,” Doe 17 said. “I feel like I wanted to leave the room and I wanted to stop, and they told me just to take a break.”
But the video came out six days later, and quickly spread across her social network. Yelp reviewers linked to it on the page for her mother’s hair salon. Her ex-boyfriend’s fraternity played the video during a chapter meeting. At parties, guests would pull it up on their phones. In elevators, people would call her “porn girl.” Doe 17 stopped going to lectures, started failing her classes, and soon left the university. She saw two therapists and a psychiatrist. She started talking a natural supplement to help her sleep.
The police report went nowhere, so Doe 17 started posting ads to Craigslist herself. From the header, they looked identical to Girls Do Porn listings. But within the body of the ad, Doe 17 offered her experience instead of a job. “I would explain exactly what they did and how they would trap you,” Doe 17 told the court. “I would explain that they would tell you that you are going for a photo shoot and that it would end up being a pornography shoot and that they would exploit you, your name, and your video and pictures everywhere... Because I did not want any girl to deal with what I had dealt with and what many girls have dealt with. I didn’t want another girl to fall for it.”
In response to her ads, several women wrote to Doe 17 saying they had almost signed up with the company, before reading her warning. She also heard from the Girls Do Porn lawyer, Aaron Sadock. In February 2016, Doe 17 said, she received a cease and desist order, mailed to her parents’ house, with her nude pictures attached.
In the letter, submitted to the court as evidence, Sadock told Doe 17 she could not continue posting as Girls Do Porn on Craigslist. If she didn’t relent, he allegedly told her, she would see a lawsuit. That proved prescient. Five months later, Doe 17 received a message from the plaintiff’s attorney, Brian Holm, informing her of the class action lawsuit currently on trial.
