[Article translated with DeepL from French source: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/pornographie/enquete-comment-l-industrie-pornographique-tente-de-se-refaire-une-virginite_6466868.html]
“Since the “French Bukkake” scandal shattered the pornography industry, a number of X-rated film production studios and broadcasters have made ethical commitments. However, our survey in collaboration with Capital shows that they are far from being respected everywhere.
In the study of his home in the south of France, the tripods and projectors of John B. Root, director and actor of pornographic films for 30 years, are covered in dust. He stopped shooting two years ago, disgusted by the legal cases that have tainted his professional sector. “It’s not porn that’s gone ‘#MeToo’. It was the police who made porn ‘#MeToo'”, he stormed when he met Radio France’s investigative unit.
A fake procuress
At the end of 2020, several press articles announced the arrest and indictment of four men for rape, procuring and trafficking in human beings, including the actor and director of X-rated videos, Pascal Ollitrault, alias Pascal OP. At the time, he was quite well known in the industry. He gave interviews on Dorcel TV and in the specialist press. At the time, he was the head of “French bukkake”. For ten years, until its closure in 2020, this site offered, for a fee, to view and take part in bukkake scenes, where dozens of men ejaculated on a single woman. Some screenshots from its Twitter account show hooded men in an arc in a shed, waiting for a woman to shoot the scene.
By looking into this man, the investigators uncovered a scheme he used to recruit female participants. In 2016, I was contacted on social networks by a young woman called Axelle Vercoutre,” explains a complainant, Amélia* (first name changed), in an interview with France Culture. She explained that she was an escort and that it was fun to sleep with strangers”. This virtual friend promised her easy money and discretion if she took part in an escorting evening and then in intimate videos. In financial difficulties, Amelia gave in to the temptation.
But behind this pseudonym, Axelle Vercoutre, hides a man. A flatterer who passes on the women’s details to Pascal OP. Dozens of complainants told the same story to the investigators. The shootings that followed went badly. Several complainants said they had not been warned about certain sexual practices they were about to undergo. They sometimes objected. Nor did they know the number of partners. They were only paid in cash if they signed contracts in which they ceded their image rights in all media, even though Pascal OP had promised them discreet distribution abroad. The police initially turned a blind eye. “I was flabbergasted to see that some of these women had lodged rape complaints as early as 2015 and that they had been told it was a commercial dispute”, says journalist Robin d’Angelo, who wrote Judy, Lola, Sofia et moi (Goutte d’Or, 2018), a book about the filming, two years before the affair broke.
Around fifty complainants
The Gendarmerie’s Paris research unit will finally be re-examining these complaints and viewing hours of footage. Videos in which women cry, complain and ask for the sexual act to be stopped. In extracts from the court file, to which Radio France’s investigative unit was able to gain access, text message exchanges between Pascal OP and other defendants show that he was rushing to shoot the scenes before the women discovered his subterfuge over a more exposed broadcast than planned. “For the sexual acts, everything was explained beforehand. I admit that I didn’t say everything for the broadcast. But not for the filming,” he explained to the examining magistrate during one of his hearings.
In the end, 17 defendants – actors, directors and producers of X-rated videos – will be indicted. This April 2024, the courts will have to decide whether the case should be referred to an assize court for acts of torture and barbarism, or to the criminal court for rape, aggravated procuring, human trafficking, money laundering and concealed work. “It would have been interesting to hear from other players in this industry, including the broadcasters, to really understand how it works,” says Dylan Slama, lawyer for one of the defendants.
Broadcasters caught up in the scandal
The scandal will also have consequences for distributors of pornographic content. This is the case for Union, Jacquie et Michel and even Dorcel. Defendants such as Pascal OP, Mat Hadix, Oliver Sweet and Rick Angel worked with them and supplied them with hundreds of videos. “We’re applying precautionary measures,” explains Grégory Dorcel, CEO of the company of the same name. In other words, some videos have been withdrawn from the catalogues. “This is a risk for us because we are contractually committed to distributing these videos, even though no legal decision has been taken”, says Dorcel’s boss.
A risk, but also a precaution, because broadcasting videos of rape is punishable under the Criminal Code (article 227-24). And the company cannot confirm that it has never had any in its offering. We have only broadcast videos in which Pascal OP is an actor,” explains Grégory Dorcel. None where he is a producer. As far as we know, he has only been implicated in shootings where he was in charge of production.
However, Radio France’s investigative unit found that Pascal OP shared his shoots with another producer, Mat Hadix, to get the participants to shoot as many scenes as possible in as little time as possible. The two men swapped roles, one acting for the other and vice versa. The broadcasters claim not to have been aware of this practice. “After the cases came to light, we took the initiative of removing the videos of the incriminated producers,” the editor of the Union website, who asked to remain anonymous, wrote to us. “We could not condone this behaviour, even though we are not aware of any complaints concerning a video that we broadcast”.
New “good practice” charters
Today, these companies are asserting that they have put good practices in place. Dorcel now has a six-person viewing committee. It also entrusted an actress-director, Liza Del Sierra, with the task of drafting an ethical charter, which was published in April 2021 (PDF file), with the help of a sociologist and a lawyer. “It implies respect for consent at all levels”, explains Liza Del Sierra. In particular, the charter requires independent producers who supply videos to Dorcel to hire an intimacy coordinator on set to obtain the free and informed consent of participants. It also requires a minimum salary of 400 euros per scene and the sending of a work plan with details of the sexual practices accepted or not, at least 14 days before filming. “We have to tick boxes on forms to say what we don’t want to do”, explains one actress.
These forms are being extended every year to include new practices, such as strangulation and the recent use of nylon. “We didn’t pay enough attention to those who didn’t want to make pornography their profession. As a result, we now have 50 women in court”, storms Liza Del Sierra. We’ve given ourselves until 2025 to ensure that 100% of the studios we distribute respect an equivalent charter,” says Grégory Dorcel. At the moment we have 39%”.
But some industry insiders have serious reservations about the effectiveness of these charters, which are mainly promoted by women directors and actresses, despite the fact that it is still men who produce the most films. “They are ‘feminist washing’. We know that women are presented as the director of the film even though they have no interest in the script, the camera or the shooting”, explains a professional who confessed to us that he had credited his partner as the director of his own X-rated film a few years ago at the request of his distributor. “They wrote this to clear their name, but it’s a bit late,” adds director John B. Root.
A privacy coordinator who is both judge and jury
Our survey shows that these charters do have their limits. For example, we met several privacy coordinators who were double-hatted, as they were also actresses on the shoots. “There aren’t many well-trained coordinators”, explains director Anoushka, and “it’s up to the production to pay them”, she adds. It’s impossible to specifically hire someone at 500 euros a day when you only have a budget of 45,000 euros, like that allocated by Canal Plus to make its latest X-rated film. “At Dorcel, they have their intimacy coordinator for their own production. But when you audit yourself, that’s not ideal either,” she adds. She and other directors are calling for productions to set up an independent fund to hire trusted third parties on location.
Actress Carolina Cherry also found that these charters are poorly applied when she shot twice for Dorcel productions last year in Budapest, Hungary, including with a Hungarian intimacy coordinator. “With 24 hours to go, they changed my programme, adding an anal scene. I discovered that this additional scene was broadcast on a label I didn’t know”. She complained to the group’s director of content. “They paid me for the extra scene. But someone younger or less comfortable would have let it happen without saying anything”. Grégory Dorcel claims to have no knowledge of this dispute. However, his communications department later told us that “on certain shoots, the same scene is sometimes shot in two versions: one with a traditional cinema camera and the other with a subjective camera”. A method of working that was eventually abandoned.
Other broadcasters such as Union do not impose privacy coordinators on the producers whose content they buy. But: “We systematically ask them to provide us with a video before and after filming, in which the actors and actresses confirm that the scenes that have just been filmed were done with their consent”, the editor-in-chief of the Union site wrote to us. “Consent isn’t just before and after the scene. It’s being asked all the time”, says Paloma Garcia Martens, an intimacy coordinator in audiovisual fiction and traditional cinema. In her view, the purpose of these videos is above all to protect the production, not to obtain free and informed consent. On a shoot,” she explains, “an intimacy coordinator needs to be able to say no to the director, while at the same time proposing solutions so that he can still carry out the scene he wants.
Jacquie et Michel in turmoil
The Arès group, which owns the Jacquie et Michel brand, was the first to draw up a guide to good practice. Just after Pascal OP’s indictment, it published a deontological (PDF file) and ethical charter applicable to all employees and content creators for their various labels: JM, JM Elite, Hot Vidéo and Colmax. The charter is designed to enable French producers to assure the Arès group that they have taken all necessary measures to ensure the full consent and protection of all parties involved, particularly women, in the production of works for its platforms.
We interviewed several participants in Jacquie et Michel shoots. None of them had received this charter at the time. “I was shocked by the behaviour of Eddy, one of the actors I was with on a shoot in 2021. We were supposed to do a fake photo, and he sat me right on his genitals,” she says. Eddy Blackone is an actor under investigation who has been cited in numerous testimonies in the French Bukkake case. Several of the women mentioned that he attempted to rape them off-camera in the shower after the scenes. In an exchange of text messages, a director who was also prosecuted, MatHadix, talks about him with Pascal OP: “Eddy: he does that to all the girls in the shower,” the file states. With bullshit like that, we could end up with a complaint for rape”.
The actor was finally arrested in October 2021, after having filmed with several professional productions, including that of Nikita Belluci, an actress and director who is now a spokesperson for an industry that wants to be more ethical. I’d been denouncing the practices of Pascal OP and others for a long time,” she explains, “but for Eddy, I’ve never heard anything. Eddy still has his actor’s file on the Jacquie et Michel website, but no one wished to respond to our requests. As for the actor’s lawyer, he is reserving his answers for the courts and points out that his client is presumed innocent.
Contentious videos still online
Despite these findings, in April 2022, at a Senate hearing before the Women’s Rights Delegation, Vincent Gey, Director of Operations for the Arès Group (which owns Jacquie et Michel) defended the seriousness of its charter. “Unannounced checks are carried out on film shoots”, he explains. “If the slightest breach is detected, our collaboration will be terminated”, he explains. He admits, however, that only one person is assigned to these checks, despite the fact that his company broadcasts over a thousand scenes a year.
Two months later, his boss, Michel Piron, the founder of Jacquie et Michel, was indicted for complicity in rape and trafficking in human beings as part of an organised gang, casting huge doubt on his company’s alleged good practices. Some of its broadcasters are distancing themselves. Canal Plus is suspending the Jacquie et Michel TV channel from June 2022. Last February, Colmax TV was also suspended. However, Michel Piron’s son, Thibault Piron, and his content director Germain Chicot set up a new company called Aramis. Now, in Canal Plus’s VOD offerings, we have identified several films shot for the Arès group in 2021 and now credited with the name Aramis.
When asked about a possible resumption of commercial relations with the creators of Jacquie et Michel, the Canal Plus communications department replied: “To the best of our knowledge, no more Jacquie et Michel content is present on the services published by the Canal+ Group (on-air channels and VOD offer)”. Since we contacted them, we have noticed that the films we had found on Canal+’s VOD service are no longer available.
But it shows that it is difficult for broadcasters to guarantee that good practice is being followed in a vague sector where the protagonists also operate under pseudonyms. “Today, new entities have been created. We’ve taken videos from Jacquie et Michel, but we’ve just cut the scene at the moment of the signature line. When we say: ‘Thank you, who? Thank you Jacquie et Michel!” concludes an industry professional.”
[Article translated with DeepL from French source: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/pornographie/enquete-comment-l-industrie-pornographique-tente-de-se-refaire-une-virginite_6466868.html]