The last few months have been a disaster for the people behind the GirlsDoPorn website. Last summer saw the start of trial in a lawsuit 22 women filed against site owner Michael Pratt and two other men. That case resulted in a $13 million verdict against the men earlier this month.
In October, the federal government charged Pratt and others with criminal sex trafficking. Pratt also faces child-pornography charges after he flew a 16-year-old to Southern California. Pratt fled the country—possibly back to his native New Zealand. He is now wanted by the FBI.
Yet throughout all that turmoil, the GirlsDoPorn site stayed up, offering visitors access to explicit videos of women who may have been coerced into shooting them. Indeed, as late as October, in the midst of the civil trial, the site was still shooting and posting new videos.
But now porn-industry blogger Mike South notes that the GirlsDoPorn website has finally gone offline. It seems to have disappeared from the Web sometime last week.
This doesn’t mean GirlsDoPorn content has disappeared from the Web, however. GirlsDoPorn video clips remain readily available from other pornographic video sites.
The operators of GirlsDoPorn are in legal trouble because dozens of women say they were tricked and coerced into appearing in videos on the site. The site attracted women by telling them that their videos would only be sold on DVD to wealthy customers overseas and would never appear online. That was a lie.
Once women arrived in San Diego for their photo shoots, they were plied with drugs and alcohol and pressured to sign documents without reading them. Women were initially offered as much as $5,000 to do the shoots, only to have those amounts arbitrarily reduced once they arrived to shoot a video.
Some women said the men physically blocked the exit to their hotel room during the shoots. Some accused one of the men of raping them before or after the on-camera shoot.
Two weeks ago, a California judge awarded the women a combined $13 million. The plaintiffs “have experienced severe harassment, emotional and psychological trauma, and reputational harm,” the judge wrote.
