SAN DIEGO, Calif. — The first week of testimonies in the “GirlsDoPorn Trial,” the sensational courtroom drama currently taking place in San Diego where 22 unnamed models are suing the owners of GirlsDoPorn for fraud over content the models shot under contract, wrapped up with a few surprises.
The anonymous Jane Does are numbered 1-22. Jane Doe 1, it was revealed this week, is a law school graduate who organized the other models into filing their complaint.
The models allege that their contracts with GirlsDoPorn are null because the company misled them. They allege the producers told them the videos would not be distributed online, and that they were exclusively shot for DVDs to be sold in overseas markets. They also allege that their personal information was shared with the website Porn Wikileaks.
Porn Wikileaks is a still-functioning website that originated around 2010-2011, coinciding with the heyday of Julian Assange’s political documents depository Wikileaks. Porn Wikileaks reportedly built its database from a security breach at Adult Industry Medical (AIM), the talent testing facility that preceded Free Speech Coalition's current PASS system.
The site has been repeatedly linked to disgruntled former performer Donny Long, a Florida boat mechanic who has become a pariah in the industry. The site — not to be confused with the similarly named The Real Porn Wikileaks, an adult industry gossip site — includes a subforum titled “Whore Hunting” where “hobbyists” and alleged stalkers freely share personal information about adult performers and their families.
The connection between GirlsDoPorn and Porn Wikileaks was an integral “part of the business model,” alleged Ed Chapin of Sanford Heisler Sharp, the models’ attorney, during his opening statement on Tuesday.
According to Chapin, leaking the models’ names and personal information was part of GirlsDoPorn’s marketing strategy to drive traffic into their paysite.
Chapin revealed that Jane Doe 1 turned the tables when she used the leaked information on Porn Wikileaks to track down several of the other models and build evidence of a fraudulent pattern.
Jane Doe 1, Chapin said, used Porn Wikileaks “as a phone book” and she found evidence of “a scheme dating back to 2009.”
Chapin explained that Jane Doe 1 has applied her skills to this trial and, though she has passed the bar, she does not intend to practice law because of stigma against people who “did porn.”
The first witness for the plaintiffs, Amberlyn Clark, testified on Tuesday that the defendants had paid her “hundreds of dollars” to deceive prospective models by posing as a former model who was happy with the company and to assure them that their videos would never be posted online.
BLL Media Inc., GirlsDoPorn parent company, has stuck to the basic message that the models signed a contract relinquishing all rights to the material to them to be distributed however they saw fit “throughout the world in perpetuity, without limitations.”
Panakos Law’s Aaron Sadock, representing BLL Media, pointed out that Jane Doe 1 had studied two semesters of contract law by the time she signed her contract and appeared in a video.
According to Sadock, the broad contract is written precisely “to ensure that someone doesn’t file a lawsuit like this.”
“A lot of money is spent in recruiting someone like Jane Doe 1,” Sadock told the court. Several of the models learned about GirlsDoPorn via Craigslist ads.
As for the alleged connection between GirlsDoPorn and Porn Wikileaks, Sadock claimed that GirlsDoPorn’s business model was to protect, not leak, the victims’ identities and that any number of “internet trolls” could have been responsible.
Alleging that “trolls are a problem for everyone in the industry,” Sadock implied that anyone watching the widely distributed content could have outed the models.
The civil trial will continue in San Diego before Superior Court Judge Kevin Enright.
