"Girls Gone Wild" Creator Busted for Exploiting Minors
JOE FRANCIS (Evan Agostini / Getty Images)
The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that "Joe Francis and the Santa Monica-based company he built on soft-core "Girls Gone Wild" videos pleaded guilty Tuesday to violating federal laws designed to prevent the sexual exploitation of children and agreed to pay fines totaling $2.1 million."
These videos sold on late night cable feature young women, mostly college students on Spring Break holiday, drunk and enagaged in various sexually explicit positions and acts. Francis failed to keep accurate records proving the age of some of the girls featured in the videos.
From the article:
In legal statements filed Tuesday, the companies acknowledged that throughout 2002 and part of 2003, it filmed, produced, and distributed sexually explicit materials in violation of record- keeping and labeling laws. Those laws require producers not only to maintain proof of age and identification for performers, but also to carry labels on their videos saying where those documents can be found.
"We regret that this occurred and will make sure that no other minors are used in 'Girls Gone Wild' films," Francis said in his court statement.
Since 1998, Francis has built a business around spring-break revelry and youthful hedonism. The company has released dozens of "Girls Gone Wild" films featuring real footage of young women, often intoxicated, bouncing around bars and beaches and flashing their breasts for the cameras.
A portion of the evidence used by the Justice Department investigation that resulted in Tuesday's guilty pleas came from a separate case filed in Panama City in 2003. The state attorney's office filed a 77-count complaint in Florida circuit court that alleged that Francis and his crew took a 16-year-old girl and four 17-year-old girls to a motel and paid them to engage in sexual conduct with one another in a shower in front of his cameras. He also paid two of the girls $50 each to engage in sexual actions with him, according to the complaint. Authorities seized film footage, Francis' Ferrari and his personal jet.
Francis pleaded not guilty to all charges. After a judge last month suppressed all the evidence, saying it was illegally obtained, Dyer said he would seek to have the case dismissed. He said Tuesday's agreement would have no bearing on the state criminal case in Panama City.
Also pending is a civil case alleging child abuse and sexual exploitation, which was filed against Francis, his crew and his company by the parents of the young women in Panama City.
Based on evidence seized in Panama City, federal investigators stepped in and obtained a search warrant for Mantra Films' Santa Monica office. The FBI has confirmed that it conducted a search of Francis' offices in September 2005.
posted by Sarah G. at 11:50 AM
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2 Comments:
Joe Francis likes to misrepresent GGW as just playful college kids having innocent fun. The truth is that it is exploitive and sexist pornography, plain and simple. This page of DVDs for sale that they admit they can't advertise on TV makes it perfectly clear.
http://www.girlsgonewild.com/index.cfm?action=store.main&product_category_id=24
The only thing that makes most of it different than "regular" porn is that it seems to be "girl on girl" only. However, clicking on "details" and looking at the box pictures makes the point of how it is truly essentially no different. The title of number 2, "Daddy's Little Girls", also points out how they are promoting the very reprehensible "younger is better" concept. (Which is often used in porn and which validates and promotes child porn.)
Below are two sample of GGW DVD promos from the link above. Sure sounds like porn to me!
1. Girls Gone Wild Sweet Young Sex Maniacs / Behind Closed Doors
These two totally new videos that are so incredibly explicit, as soon as you watch them you’ll know why we can’t advertise them on TV!
First, it’s Girls Gone Wild Behind Closed Doors where, among other things, you’ll see Cassandra and Britney from Alabama grind themselves together until they both explode into the biggest orgasm you’ve ever seen!
Next, it’s Girls Gone Wild Sweet Young Sex Maniacs! We were shocked to find so many beautiful young girls who just couldn’t get enough squirt.
2. Girls Gone Wild Daddy's Little Girls / Girls Gone Wild Island Orgy
This is a special two-volume video that’s so explicit we would never put this footage on our regular tapes.
First, is Girls Gone Wild Island Orgy. Where, among other things, you’ll watch 18 year old Christina loose her virginity to another girl. Christina’s moans will stay in your mind forever.
Next, it's Girls Gone Wild, Daddy’s Little Girls. If you like cute, young, innocent, blondes, you’re going to love to see how these girls corrupt each other when Daddy’s not around.
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Just innocent college girls having fun in the same way they would on their own anyway? I don't think so.
One day while I was in a seldom-used upstairs bedroom looking for some old family photos, I opened a bureau drawer and out tumbled 43 pornographic dvd’s (all of them Girls Gone Wild), a few VHS tapes and some magazines.
It didn’t take any snooping for me to find that the dvd “collection” belonged to my husband, who is the only male over puberty in my household. I subsequently discovered that my husband was coming home during the workday to indulge in his “hobby,” and that he had an on-line pornography habit that had him logged onto 52.5 pages of pornographic images a day. Most while my little boy and I were in the next room watching television, doing homework or fixing his supper.
I am no bag lady. I am a professional with a doctorate, a working mom, smart and sexy and motivated. I’m a good mother, a great cook, do my best at keeping the house tidy and I participate in some amazing extracurricular activities, excelling at all of them.
What’s wrong with a guy like my husband?
I was surprised that most of my husband’s collection came from an apparently popular “series” called Girls Gone Wild. I guess I had heard of it in passing but never had a reason to investigate or really think too much about it.
What I saw appalled me. The premise is that a heard-but-unseen videographer walks around some beach or nightspot during the week of spring break talking to college-age girls. He tries to talk them into flashing their breasts. In exchange they get a tee shirt or a hat.
Most of them are obviously at least tipsy and some are loudly and obnoxiously drunk. Some of them are chomping at the bit to show off what they’ve got and some are shy and demure and the videographer has to talk and talk and talk to get them to finally show him a teeny bit of their breasts for half a second.
They are usually in groups of two to four. I noticed that the more girls in the group, the easier it seems to be for the camera guy to get them out of their bathing suit tops. They glance at each other a bunch before deciding, “Hey, if she does it, I’ll do it, too.”
Every once in a while, the guy hits the jackpot and will get a couple of the girls to boobie-bump or even French kiss for the camera.
It was about to get mind-numbingly boring when all of a sudden, the camera cut to a hotel room with four girls in it.
The smooth-talking videographer encouraged the girls to get naked. It took forever. Even in groups, girls are reluctant to get naked. There was a lot of eye contact among the girls, nervous glances. Very plainly they didn’t want to do it but were obviously buzzed and maybe a little confused. So one by one, they’d pull off shirts and bikini tops and finally their bottoms.
This is heavily edited footage, and the cameraman must have at least one or two assistants for the sound and lighting at this stage. The beach/bar footage is like some guy is simply walking around with a camcorder. This newer footage is much more staged.
I watched, horrified, as someone off-camera squirted whipped cream from a can onto breasts and genitals and proceeded to talk these heterosexual girls into having lesbian group sex.
I screened three of the dvd’s. The only thing that changes is the setting—is it Cancun or South Padre Island or Lauderdale? Each starts out with a lot of mind-numbing boobie flashing and ends up with four girls in a shower or on a bed in some hotel room performing non-heterosexual acts on each other and showing some thinly-veiled distaste and anxiety over what they are doing.
This is, at its best coercion and degradation, of these young women.
All of the girls look alike. Really. They are all Caucasian, and most are blonde. They don’t all have big breasts but none have really small ones. None of them has even a hint of a belly; their abs are flat as a pancake. And while some are curvaceous, not one has big thighs or a big butt.
The average age looks to be about seventeen.
What’s missing? I mean besides chunky girls, girls with glasses, girls with braces on their teeth or girls who are plain…and African-Americans, Latinas and Asians?
What’s also missing is professional actors and actresses engaged in a variety of sexual activities for good pay and a benefits package.
What’s present is girls who are too drunk/buzzed/high to stop themselves from going along with the videographer, who is cajoling them to perform lesbian sex acts on each other. Of course there may be a lesbian or two in the bunch, but these are, by and large, very young heterosexual girls who are being coerced by peer pressure and the fact that they’re not sober—into doing sex acts for the camera that they would not normally do in private!
I have three enormous problems with the Girls Gone Wild series:
1. Exploitation of (very) young women.
These girls are being chosen for a particular body type, are sorted out into groups to up the peer pressure and are primed with alcohol. Sure they have to show an ID. You have to be 21 to drink. How many college girls are 21 years old? I’d guess it is less than 25%. Conservatively, three-fourths of the girls being filmed are showing fake ID’s. How many of those are actually at least eighteen? (I’ve seen where there have been lawsuits against Girls Gone Wild for featuring underage girls. Joe Francis, who produces GGW lamented, “But they showed us fake ID’s.” Duh!)
I’m trying to think of the worst things I did while I was in college. Of course I consumed alcohol. Back in those days, people old enough to vote and go die in a war for their country could LEGALLY buy alcohol. But I didn’t even go on a “spring break” trip. Among the worst things I did were pranks, like short-sheeting someone’s bed or toilet-papering somebody’s car. Really. Or the deal where you put shaving cream on somebody’s hand while they’re asleep and tickle their nose.
2. There’s a stupid guy getting filthy rich off of exploiting these women and off exploiting the poor dumb saps that buy the videos. I read recently where he was kidnapped, humiliated and tortured (goody, on film!) in an attempt to extort some of that money out of him. That’s too good for him. I think a few of these exploited girls’ daddies need to kidnap him, get him drunk, tie him down and rape him until he’s bloody. Oh, yes, and sell plenty of videotapes of it.
3. The fellows who buy the dvd’s are being exploited too. I mean, everybody knows they’re too helpless to think with the brain that’s actually in their cranium as opposed to their other brain.
Maybe I’m being glib, but it doesn’t much bother me if a few frat boys tap a keg and watch a few of these dvd’s. After all, the girls are at least close to their age.
What bothers me is the guys like my husband. Over fifty. Plenty of disposable income. Decides he’s going to buy every single dvd that comes out and have himself an impressive “collection.” He’s even gone so far as to tell people that he doesn’t really watch the tapes. It’s just a “collection” and it “will be worth something one day.” Funny, I have been keeping an eye on his DVD player. About every three days, he’s put a different DVD into it. Since he doesn’t watch the DVD’s, I guess he just puts them in there and spins them a bit so they can get some fresh air.
Nope, these things are addictive and break up people’s marriages. For someone that age to have a stash of (now) close to fifty of these things is perverse, fetishist and borders on pedophilia.
How should I feel? My husband has essentially abandoned giving me any love and affection in favor of this myriad of teen queens. He has also declined to enter counseling or to alter his behavior.
Now, what do you think my I should do?
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