“The “French Bukkake” case is still waiting for the Court of Appeal to rule on its referral to the Paris Criminal Court. On Tuesday, the director, Pascal OP, asked to be released from prison. But the judges decided otherwise.
In prison for 44 months, the director of the hard pornographic site, “French Bukkake” . Pascal OP, 62, appeared this Tuesday, May 7, before the Paris investigating chamber, to request his release. But the judges of the court of appeal decided to keep him behind bars.
Gray sweatshirt and white goatee, this little plump man should soon reach the end of the 48-month period authorized by law for his pre-trial detention. Incarcerated in October 2020 after his indictment, he was sent back, in July 2023, along with sixteen other people, producers, directors or actors, to the Paris criminal court, mainly for acts of “gang rape”, “pimping”. » and “organized gang trafficking in human beings”.”
“Xvideos, the most-visited pornographic website in the world, faces difficulties due to its content, which is being investigated by the police and card-payment companies. That is why we have looked into the business of the people behind the website, which is located near Prague’s Wenceslas Square. We started gathering testimonies of women who complained about the practices of another company of the same owners, Legal Porno, which focuses on filming extreme pornography. A number of women said they had left the studio injured.
We have found the complaints about the treatment by the production of Legal Porno on social networks but also on closed forums run by the owners of Xvideos. Other women who were contacted by Deník N and who were promised anonymity have confirmed these accounts. The women said they had suffered injuries during the filming of extreme practices. Many of them said they had had no idea what they would be filming.
Legal Porno specialises in the most hardcore pornography, for which clients pay well. However, sometimes such shooting represents an extraordinary strain on the bodies and psyche of the actresses. Some of them described to Deník N that they had left the set torn, bleeding and unable to control their bowel movements.
In most testimonies, the same motives are repeated over and over again. Before, and sometimes during, the shooting the women did not know what the producers planned to do with them. The women usually had to engage in very dangerous and complicated practices, for example several men having anal sex with a single woman at the same time.
In addition to publicly available statements, Deník N has obtained testimonies of three women who, independently of each other, shared their experiences with filming for Legal Porno. We do not disclose any details that might identify or endanger them.
Lidocaine against pain
The first witness the reporters spoke to still works in the pornographic industry. She did not leave it although her experience with Legal Porno was one of her first in the industry and, as she says, it has marked her forever. She speaks only very carefully about her experiences: “We had agreed that there would be one guy, but in the end there were three blacks,” says the actress. She says she took the work as she needed money quickly and knew that Legal Porno paid more than other productions.
The woman explained that although she was not raped, she did not feel comfortable because she saw from the beginning that the original agreement had not been kept. However, she needed the money. She describes a similarly difficult situation as other actresses – they feel pressured at the moment, it is often their first experience, they are already on the set where several people are waiting for them, and they cannot refuse once the crew is ready.
The filming process was also unexpected for the woman. Among other things, the actress claims that, without prior agreement, she was given local analgesics to relieve pain. „The worst was the ignorance; I was not prepared for it at all. I didn’t know that lidocaine could hurt me when they started putting it in my anus. They didn’t rape me, but I know very well how they behave, everyone knows how they behave,“ says the actress, adding that they pushed her to complete the scene.
“So they put lidocaine in my anus, it burned terribly, they wanted me to complete the shoot, I kept bleeding so they gave me more and more lidocaine as they wanted to finish it, but it still didn’t work, it hurt terribly,” she describes. She says not only the production but also herself wanted to complete the scene. The actress knew that if she were unable to do it, she would get no money. And that is what happened – because of great pain and strong bleeding she stopped the shooting and left empty-handed.
“They really wanted to complete the scene with me, but in the end they stopped when I said no,” the actress adds. “I did not complete the scene. Nobody paid me anything,” she said.
Lidocaine is used as a local anaesthetic, most often in dentistry. It may affect the heart rate. Its use in Legal Porno has been confirmed also by one of its directors, who uses the nickname Giorgio Grandi and who wrote about it in an official forum. He reacted to a blog post in which an actress described the practices used during shooting. “I use a gel that contains between 1% and 2.5% lidocaine,” wrote the director.
To the witness who talked to Deník N it never occurred to complain about this treatment. Also other actresses said that the entire industry knows that this production uses rough practices against women. According to the actresses, it is a public secret at which nobody should be surprised.
Another witness told the reporters about a similar experience. After the shooting, she even ended up in hospital. “I had to have an operation but I don’t want to come back to it. I will not tell you more about it,” another actress said.
A very trustworthy source from the pornographic industry described to Deník N that Legal Porno often uses girls that have no experience with shooting and do not know what their bodies can stand. “They get paid much more than at other productions. When you have a new girl or you have her exclusively, you earn more. Now, during the coronavirus pandemic, many new faces have appeared there,” said the source.
Legal Porno shoots not only in Krakovská Street in Prague, but also in other studios in the Czech Republic. Every day it launches around seven new videos. “There is not a month, or maybe a week, without a girl having a bad experience. Some agencies do not recommend Legal Porno and do not send girls there. After working for Legal Porno, the girls can’t work, can’t control their bowel movements and need to take a break from filming,” the source added.
The insider did not wish to disclose their name as the owners of Xvideos control a large part of the production in the Czech Republic. If the insider were blacklisted, it would ruin their business. However, Deník N knows their identity.
Public testimonies
Information about the practices at Legal Porno has appeared on social networks. Several famous people from the industry who have hundreds of thousands of followers have shared their bad experiences. For example, the actress using the stage name Veronica Avluv, who has 268 thousand followers, confided on Twitter in 2019 that she had been injured during a shooting.
“I’ve been nursing a serious prolapse injury from one shoot for Legal Porno. It was supposed to be one of 4. I’ve been dealing with blood and shit since the scene. Can’t believe they can sell my pain online but they can,” she wrote.
The porn actress Samantha Rone, who has 144 thousand followers, published her experience in 2016. “I wish I was mad about the money. I’m more mad that people can behave and treat other people like that,” the actress wrote.
Similar complaints can be found on the official forum of Legal Porno. “At the beginning, everything was O.K. The boys were kind and thoughtful. However, the more scenes I had shot, the more ruthless they became as people just want it rougher, rougher and rougher! In the end I bled so much I had to cancel shootings for other productions because I just could not shoot,” a porn actress wrote on the Legal Porno forum last year. Her account is official, it was authorised by the producers.
“In the morning before the last scene, I woke up in fear. I knew that it would be terrible and stupid and that it would be no good. It was just too much. But it was clear to me that no one cared,” she confided to anonymous fans of the Legal Porno production.
None of the girls informed the police about their experiences; at least none of them said so to Deník N. Most of the women said they doubted whether the police would do anything. It is therefore unclear whether the police has ever looked into the possible violence in front of cameras.
“The law prohibits us from providing information on specific persons and other entities,” Eva Kropáčová, spokesperson of the Prague Police, said.
The owners of Legal Porno at first refused to talk Deník N journalists and to answer any of their questions. Then one of the owners, Mr Pacaud, called a reporter. Mr Pacaud said he wanted to clear up certain things and promised to send a reply by email. Then came a reply from GTFLIX TV, but the authors of the reply forbade Deník N to publish the reply and accused its reporters of bias.
“The accusations are completely made up. For nearly nine years we have been victims of a massive disinformation campaign carried out by Pierre Woodman. It includes forging documents and paying models to make false accusations,” the owners of Legal Porno wrote in their reply. “Tomorrow we will consider filing an information with the Czech Police against you and your newspaper,” the company has threatened.
Ten girls speak on camera
The owners of Legal Porno did not mention the name of the world-famous producer Pierre Woodman by coincidence – they have had disputes for years. Woodman, who is active mainly in Hungary and the Czech Republic, has also pointed out to unfair practices of his competitors.
According to porn-industry insiders, Woodman does not have such a heated dispute with anyone other than the Pacaud siblings. Woodman, who was contacted by Deník N, handed over to the newspaper testimonies of ten actresses he says he has collected in recent years. All the women in the videos talk about their experiences with Legal Porno productions similarly as the actresses with whom Deník N spoke.
Deník N will not publish the videos, to protect the privacy of the women. However, the newspaper contacted some of them to verify whether their testimonies were manipulated. The women with whom the reporters spoke confirmed their original statements.
How did Woodman’s videos come about? The producer has said he shoots everything on camera, including interviews with job seekers. He does it to prevent any disputes or accusations. To Deník N he has provided the testimonies of ten girls who, when he asked them about their experiences in the industry, themselves started talking about Legal Porno.
One of the girls said that, in order to make the scenes, she drank a cocktail of painkillers. Another woman said that during the shooting she was bleeding from her anus but they did not stop the shooting anyway. They gave her a gel thanks to which she could continue and did not feel pain. She said she did not know at the time that it was a painkiller.
“They gave me anaesthetics, but it did not help at all. No one raised their voice at me, but when I was crying and said I couldn’t do it, someone came and gave me a shot of vodka to relax,” described one of the women.
According to lawyers contacted by Deník N, in this case – if it happened in this way – a thin line between shooting and rape may have been crossed.
“This creates a situation that cannot end otherwise than in a rape. During such shooting, the woman should not drink – it is clear how it will end. Rape consists also in someone misusing a woman’s helplessness, which can be caused also by drunkenness,” lawyer Tomáš Sokol assessed the situation.
Lawyer Lucie Hrdá sees it similarly. “In my opinion this is rape. When you misuse someone’s helplessness, you commit rape. In particular when you cause the helplessness, which is much more dangerous for the society,” Hrdá said. “Rape includes also expressing resistance during an act,” she added.
According to Sokol, local anaesthetics or alcohol may be used during pornographic shooting if the actress has consented to it and was in a state in which she was able to make such a decision. This means, for example, that she was not drunk.
One of the girls described how, during one of the practices, the actor used force to achieve what he wanted. When shooting anal sex, actresses have to prepare to avoid the intercourse being painful. “At times he held my ass and tried to force a [dildo] in it, so that it would be over fast. But I was already crying and said I did not want to do it, so I ended it,” described the witness.
Another woman alleged that people from Legal Porno forced the shooting of a scene. “They forced me to shoot double anal intercourse. I refused another scene,” said the woman. She said the producers tried to trick her by saying that they would only try a scene and would not film it. The scene was to include anal sex. “I said to them that even simple anal intercourse was painful for me. They told me it wouldn’t be on any video. So we tried it and I said it hurt terribly. I pushed them away and said it hurt. Then I watched previews on Legal Porno and the video was there,” the witness described her frustration.
Penalty for failing to complete a shoot
Other women on the videos say that people from Legal Porno pressured them to continue shooting. The producers allegedly threatened the actresses with penalties in the order of tens of thousand of Czech crowns. “I stopped working for them. A woman did not agree with the fact that I wanted to terminate the contract on the spot. The contract stipulated that when I stop [the shooting] early, I must pay a penalty of 70 thousand Czech crowns. Some girls before me left but did not have to pay anything,” a witness said.
The lawyer Sokol stresses that such practice would be unacceptable and the penalties would be unenforceable. “This is similar to someone agreeing in a contract to pour petrol over themselves and set themselves on fire, and paying a penalty if they did not do it. I believe that, in relation to pornography, such clause is null and void,” Sokol explains.
In some aspects, the situation at Legal Porno may be similar to the case of the porn production Czech Casting. In that case, the girls testified that the producers pressured them and threatened them with penalties if they failed to complete their work. The police then charged nine people with human trafficking, sexual coercion and rape. As in the case of Legal Porno, the girls said that before the shooting they did not know what awaited them.
War of two producers
It is important to bear in mind that Woodman is not unbiased in relation to the situation at Legal Porno. His legal dispute with the Pacauds has a personal dimension. Woodman claims that on the forum of Legal Porno they published pictures of his wife and of his daughter (that picture was allegedly taken when the daughter was a minor) and invited people to visit his daughter. Woodman says this is the reason why he has led a court dispute in France.
On the other hand, the Pacaud siblings, namely their company GTFLIX TV, say in their reply that Woodman has been carrying out a disinformation campaign against them and has been paying models to raise false accusations against them.
“Woodman must have taken an interest in your biased articles and we see that the way in which you are trying to obtain information may easily lead to false testimonies,” GTFLIX TV added.
However, not only Woodman is pointing his finger at Legal Porno. Also other people from the industry have described to Deník N that Legal Porno wants girls to engage in practices their bodies cannot cope with. In addition, the sources say, the actresses are often very young. According to sources who are familiar with the pornographic industry in the Czech Republic – we do not quote Woodman as an anonymous source in this article – there are cases when girls who have just turned 18 appear at a pornographic shooting where they are asked to be penetrated by several men and to engage in dangerous practices that may cause injuries.
“Sometimes they end up in hospital and often they are so traumatised that they quit the industry,” an insider told us under the promise of anonymity. A number of people from the pornographic industry have openly admitted that they are afraid to talk about the issues around Legal Porno. The reason is that the Pacauds control a large share of the pornographic market in the Czech Republic and in the world.
According to financial statements, the Pacauds’ revenues are in the hundreds of millions of Czech crowns. A proof of their wealth is a recent transaction in which they overpaid Pornhub and Larry Flynt, the owner of the Hustler brand, in an auction for the Penthouse magazine. The owners of Xvideos paid for it an equivalent of 250 million Czech crowns.
The most-visited pornographic website of Xvideos faces difficulties
The siblings Stephane Michael Pacaud and Malorie Deborah Pacaud own, through WGCZ, also the porn site Xvideos. According to the analytical website SimilarWeb, Xvideos is the most-visited pornographic website in the world. Of all the websites, it is the seventh most visited. Legal Porno is not as big, but it ranks among 500 most-visited pornographic websites in the world with nearly 20 million visits, the largest number of them being from the United States.
The reporters of Deník N have described how the system of Xvideos enables to upload any content with just an anonymous email address. That is how, without any supervision, it is possible to upload there illegal pornography depicting victims of violence, revenge porn, or minors. To report an illegal video is actually more difficult than to upload it. The matter is now being investigated by the police and by the Visa and Mastercard card-payment companies.
The situation is analogical to that of the Pornhub website, to which financial-services companies blocked payments after the New York Times wrote a month ago that Pornhub contained child pornography or videos depicting rape.
“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.”
The Haut Conseil de l’Égalité entre les hommes et les femmes (HCE) (High Council for Equality between Men and Women) has warned of the proliferation on the Internet of content constituting offences of sexual assault, rape or paedocriminality, with too easy access for minors. It recommends stepping up the fight, in particular by making better use of the existing criminal arsenal.
In a decision handed down on 5 January 2023, the French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) made an important clarification to Article 227-24 of the Criminal Code. According to this article, “the fact (…) of producing, transporting or disseminating by any means whatsoever and whatever the medium, a message of a violent nature, inciting to terrorism, pornographic (…) or of a nature seriously prejudicial to human dignity (…) is punishable by three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros when the message is likely to be seen or perceived by a minor”. And according to the Cour de cassation, this text applies “even if access by a minor to the messages results from a simple declaration by the minor indicating that he or she is at least eighteen years old”. In other words, publishers of pornographic videos must find a more effective way of preventing minors from accessing their content than simply declaring their age, or risk being prosecuted.
The problem is made all the more acute by the fact that some of the content available on these platforms falls within the scope of several criminal offences. It is against this backdrop that the French High Council for Equality between Men and Women (HCE) recently published a report on the spread of pornocriminality, highlighting the risks incurred as a result of the ever-increasing consumption of content by ever-younger users.
THE FINDING: ILLEGAL ACTS FILMED, VIDEOS ILLEGALLY DISTRIBUTED
The HCE report notes the existence of ten or so categories of pornographic videos, some of which are particularly violent, promoting misogynist hatred and rape culture. These videos include sexual assault (article 222-27 of the Penal Code), rape (art. 222-23, Penal Code), child pornography (art. 222-22) and child pornography (art. 227-23-1), all of which are punishable offences, as is the sharing of these videos on networks, as they incite violence and hatred (L. 29 July 1881, article 24).
According to the HCE, the proliferation of this type of video depicting illegal acts, and the ease with which it can be accessed, has the effect of altering the vision of healthy sexuality for consumers, who are increasingly young: 51% of 12-year-old boys consume it every month, and their first exposure to pornography begins at the age of 10. This illegal content stems from practices that are outside the law, in which pornography producers engage in pimping, sex trafficking or child pornography.
THE INEFFECTIVENESS OF THE PHAROS PLATFORM
According to the HCE, the taboo surrounding pornography contributes to the fact that platforms disseminating illegal content continue to benefit from a “false belief in legality”. There is a platform called “PHAROS”, set up in 2009, for reporting manifestly illegal content on the net: this is the “Platform for harmonising, analysing, cross-checking and directing reports”. It is responsible for centralising reports in accordance with the French law on confidence in the digital economy (LCEN) of 21 June 2004.
Article 6-I-7 of the LCEN aims to prevent so-called child pornography (featuring children), incitement to violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, and offences against human dignity, by means of repressive measures, in particular through reporting. However, despite the many reports made about them, violent and sexist pornographic content, involving torture and degrading treatment, is not removed from pornographic sites. In fact, in its report, the HCE presents tests carried out on the largest platforms displaying pornographic content: none of the content reported has been removed, even though it would qualify as “child pornography” within the meaning of the LCEN. The association Osez le féminisme had carried out the same operation before the HCE, obtaining the same result.
The findings confirm the risks of minors being exposed to pornocriminality, which is contrary to article 227-24 of the French Penal Code, which was strengthened on this point by the law of 30 June 2020, requiring filtering devices to be installed on entry to the sites in question. Platforms were thus required to put in place measures to prevent the risks of minors being connected. The CNIL, which was heard by the HCE, states that “the General Data Protection Regulation of 2016 does not preclude online age checks for access to pornographic sites”, and even adds that it might be possible to introduce checks using bankcards. Alternatively, a device for analysing facial features could also be introduced.
THE HCE’S RECOMMENDATIONS
According to the HCE, the European authorities must “take up this issue”, starting by supporting the draft European regulation on online paedo-crime. It is also proposed that pornography be included under the heading of sexual exploitation in the European directive of 5 April 2011 on trafficking in human beings. The report also recommends criminalising the illegal sharing of sexual content, particularly intimate content distributed without consent: this could be included in Article 7 of the draft directive on violence against girls and women.
UPDATE THE DEFINITION OF PROCURING
Similarly, the HCE urges the authorities to act more firmly, in particular by legally defining prostitution and procuring, so that national laws can be better applied in the event of litigation. By redefining procuring, it would be possible to take into account all forms of commodification of sexuality, particularly those present on pornographic content platforms. In addition, the HCE proposes that pornography be assimilated to “filmed sexual exploitation”, a practice that is developing as a result of the expansion of digital technology. Jurisprudence has a poor grasp of prostitution on digital platforms: a ruling of 27 March 1996 shows that the Court of Cassation has stuck to a purely physical definition of prostitution: “prostitution consists of lending oneself, in return for remuneration, to physical contact of any kind, in order to satisfy the sexual needs of others”.
MAKE BETTER USE OF EXISTING CRIMINAL OFFENCES
The Haut Conseil de l’Égalité (High Council for Equality) also asserts that it is necessary to introduce a criminal policy equating certain forms of pornography with sexist and sexual violence, based on existing offences: exposure of minors to pornography (art. 227-23 C. pén.), child pornography (art. 223-27), incitement to hatred and violence (law 29 July 1181, art. 24). The HCE also advocates training magistrates on this issue, by including a module on pornocriminality in their initial and in-service training.
FACILITATE THE BLOCKING OF SITES THROUGH THE ISP
Lastly, the HCE calls on the Pharos reporting platform to act effectively, through collaboration with the competent authorities and Internet service providers (article 6-1 of the law of 21 June 2004), in order to remove or block illegal content, by extending its administrative police powers to content that glorifies physical and sexual violence, which could be done by assimilating it to acts of torture and barbarism.
The publication of this report therefore seems to reflect a growing awareness of the dangers of certain forms of pornography and the inaction of institutional players. On 18 October 2023, the Court of Cassation ruled that a child protection association can request the blocking of Internet access to a pornographic site accessible by minors, without going through the publisher (i.e. the person who broadcasts the site): all it has to do now is ask the Internet service provider directly (i.e. the person who transmits the site, such as Orange, Free, Bouygues Télécom, etc.). This is a major step forward for these associations, faced with publishers who are often based abroad.
This article was written, when it was first published, as part of a partnership with the Master 2 in Electronic Media Law at the University of Aix-Marseille, between October 2023 and January 2024. More articles can be consulted on the website of the Institut de recherches et d’études en droit de l’information et de la culture (IREDIC).
At a time when the debate on pornography is beginning to gain momentum in France following the opening of an investigation against the Jacquie & Michel website, and the subsequent arrest of several pimping “producers” thanks to a tip-off from three feminist associations, the filmed prostitution lobby is organizing to fend off the blows of abolitionists.
Together, we will analyze the way the media have communicated on the subject since the opening of this investigation, in order to pinpoint the strategy of the defenders of porn-prostitution, notably through the example of Robin d’Angelo.
Robin d’Angelo is a journalist who has “infiltrated” the porn industry in order to write a book on the subject. Some abolitionists relay his work to show the misogynistic violence that is commonplace in the industry.
Don’t get me wrong: although he’s helped expose this violence, this man is no ally, because he’s a regulationist. His goal? To make you believe that there is such a thing as “good porn” and “bad porn”. This idea obviously runs totally counter to the values of abolitionist feminists, for whom “ethical” porn doesn’t exist.
In all his interviews, Robin asserts that he believes this activity should be “regulated”, not “banned”. He argues that we need to create laws, supervise and protect “actresses”. These are exactly the same arguments as those hammered home by associations such as STRASS, which maintain that there is a difference between “forced” and “consenting” prostitutes. In this debate, one of the trump cards played by those in favor of regulation is to blur the definitions of rape and pimping, by communicating in such a way as to make them ever more confusing.
For example, porn producer Nikita Bellucci posted on her twitter account the news that her colleague Pascal OP had been arrested for rape and pimping, candidly proclaiming that the industry needs to be cleaned up. It’s hard to believe her sincerity when you consider that she and her husband had known about the facts for a long time, without ever having denounced them… With this statement, we rather get the impression that Bellucci is brandishing this sordid example in order to better dissociate herself from the caricatured portrait of the pimp using violence to physically coerce women into prostitution, thus reinforcing the archaic belief that rape can only be defined by violence.
Yet the legal definitions of rape and pimping are very clear:
“Pimping is the act, by anyone, in any manner whatsoever: 1° Helping, assisting or protecting the prostitution of others ; 2° Profiting from the prostitution of others, sharing the proceeds or receiving subsidies from a person who habitually engages in prostitution; 3° To hire, train or divert a person with a view to prostitution, or to exert pressure on them to prostitute themselves or continue to do so.”
As for rape, it is defined by the penal code as.
“Any act of sexual penetration, of any kind whatsoever, committed on the person of another or on the person of the perpetrator by violence, constraint, threat or surprise”.
Consent is not mentioned.
This notion, often invoked by feminists who want to combat rape, but also by defenders of the prostitution system, is problematic. Indeed, when you consider the subject of prostitution and porn, it becomes clear that consent can be monetized and manipulated – particularly in a situation of control – that it is conditioned by our social construction based on sexist stereotypes, and that it can be the consequence of traumatic arousal.
It’s clear that regulators brandish consent to make you forget the constraint that leads women to say yes, a yes behind which lies a whole system of domination and pressure: patriarchy, capitalism.
It’s in the very nature of porn-prostitution to buy the yes of its victims, to make them consent, thereby suggesting that they alone are responsible, and to use this to prevent them from denouncing the intrinsic violence of this activity.
But back to Robin. In a recent interview on Konbini, he recounts the sexism and violence he witnessed on the Jacquie & Michel and Dorcel shoots he attended. In particular, he recounts how producers manipulate women to force them to “consent” to certain practices, for example, by taking them by surprise during the scene, then insisting, often to impose sodomy.
Robin makes it clear: “actresses don’t have the option of saying no”. So he describes rape, but without ever uttering the word. He also cites the reasons why the women he has met do porn: need for money, to feel valued, to please a boyfriend…
So we have a man who is clearly aware of the damage porn does to women. It would be easy for an uninformed audience to see him as a well-meaning man, eager to denounce an unfair situation and bring about change…
The interview starts to become problematic when he admits, with a mixture of embarrassment and amusement, to having taken part in certain scenes. However, he denies having shot penetration scenes, which he presents as the most dangerous for women. An insidious way of mitigating the violence of bukkake, the theme of the scene in which he admits to having made an appearance. Bukkake is a very popular practice in porn which consists in ejaculating as a group on a woman’s body, often her face or breasts. The aim of this practice is clearly to use women as “vessels”, to humiliate and dirty them.
At the start of the interview, Robin introduced himself as a pro-feminist and explained that he had been inspired to infiltrate the porn industry because he felt disturbed by the contradiction presented by watching porn that he identified as degrading to women. However, when he talks about it, bukkake seems to be acceptable to him, although he doesn’t go into detail and passes over it quickly.
It’s at the end of the interview that it becomes clear that his apparent criticism of gender-based violence in porn is very superficial. Indeed, he ends by saying that, in his opinion,
“porn is just a mirror of society and those who want to censor it want to make the mirror disappear as if it will destroy the image it reflects of them.”
We note the use of the word “censorship”, a pejorative term that designates an “arbitrary or doctrinal limitation of everyone’s freedom of expression”.
Speaking of censorship, he presents porn under the guise of fiction, a simple cinematographic work, an artistic means of expressing creativity. This is pornographers’ favorite technique for concealing the fact that, unlike action films in which scenes of violence are produced by special effects and acting, porn “actresses” actually suffer the abuse inflicted on them: strangulation, beatings, penetrations causing anal and vaginal tears, etc…
It’s surprising that Robin should present things this way, after going to such lengths to highlight the power imbalance between men and women in this industry, and the physical damage caused by repeated penetrations and other violence inflicted on “actresses”.
The ambiguity of its positioning is thus obvious from this final statement.
To sum up, porn-prostitution is a hotbed of misogynist violence, but the solution is not to “censor” this violence, but to try to improve the “working” conditions of “actresses”. In the end, it’s back to the myth of “good” porn and “bad” porn, “good” pimping and “bad” pimping, etc….
Pour faire passer cette idée – dont dépendent d’immenses profits pour l’industrie pornographique ainsi que le maintien d’un privilège masculin archaïque, la stratégie de Robin d’Angelo est la suivante : il commence par dénoncer des violences qui ne peuvent plus être niées maintenant que la parole des survivantes de la porno-prostitution se libère, faisant croire qu’il se range du côté de ces dernières, avant de conclure que la solution réside dans une meilleure réglementation du secteur pornographique.
It’s striking that all the media reporting on the Jacquie & Michel affair chose precisely the same angle.
On September 11, 2020, the newspaper 20 minutes published the testimony of Karima, one of the first Jacquie & Michel victims to speak out.
Barely a few days later, a second article appeared in the same daily newspaper, containing several more of the dozens of survivors’ testimonies that followed Karima’s story. The facts of psychological and sexual violence recounted by these women were chilling, but the journalist nonetheless managed to conclude his article… by promoting Onlyfans, presented as a “safer” platform for those wishing to launch into “sex work”.
As for Elle magazine, in its September 18 issue it published a double-page article entitled “porno mais réglo”, extolling the virtues of so-called “feminist” or “ethical” porn. The article only hints at the “all-too-frequent abuses in the porn industry”, without a word for the victims, and presents the solution as better salaries, “a more humane environment, and above all better supervision”. Here, the main argument in favor of this type of “porn” is that more and more women are consuming it, and this demand must of course be met.
Nowhere did we read that attempts to regulate prostitution have always failed, nor that studies have proven that desireless penetration, whether on camera or not, is a form of violence in itself, with serious physical and psychological consequences.
Above all, it’s striking how quickly the media diverted the public’s attention from these revelations to instantly offer them an alternative presented as revolutionary. The observer’s reasoning is thus short-circuited before the conclusion can be drawn in his or her mind that porn-prostitution is filmed rape, because of the constraint it implies for the “actresses”. Rape is essential to the production of the pornographic images demanded by consumers.
The words of survivors, now too numerous to be ignored, are misused to make them seem like a new wave of revelations in the wake of #metoo, putting them on the same level as those of victims of sexual violence in sport or cinema, for example. It’s as if porn “actresses” could be protected in the same way as figure skaters, and that all it would take to put an end to rape in this field was to raise awareness.
The strategy deployed by the defenders of filmed prostitution, from Nikita Bellucci to the editors of Elle and Robin d’Angelo, lies in superficially criticizing the obvious sexism of this milieu, pretending to be indignant about the violence revealed by the victims as if we were only just discovering it, and then using the “ethical porn” model as a decoy to avoid questioning the industry itself at all costs.
We can therefore measure how far we still are from the demands made by abolitionist feminists and, in the first instance, by survivors of porn-prostitution.
WHAT SURVIVORS WANT: Survivors are calling for an end to the commodification of bodies in all its forms – the only real way to put an end to this unbearable violence.
To this end, they are trying to inform the general public about the disastrous consequences of pornographic practices, not only for the “actresses” – whether “consenting” or not – but for society as a whole.
They insist that content presented as “ethical” is nothing but a scam, both a new loss leader and a front to whitewash an industry that continues to enrich itself on the most despicable macho violence.
They try to dismantle the notion of consent, because they know the mechanisms that construct this famous “consent” based on economic pressure, manipulation, traumatic terrain and sexist societal constructs that lead women to believe that their value lies in their degree of “fuckability”. They also understand that “consent” in no way alleviates the physical and psychological consequences for women who are victims of the violence of repeated unwanted sexual encounters filmed and broadcast on a large scale, with no possibility of controlling these images for the rest of their lives.
Feminist abolitionists are calling for real reflection on what it means for society as a whole, and for new generations in particular, to agree to place our imaginations and fantasies in the hands of profit-hungry industrialists.
Finally, they alert us to the danger posed by lobbies who use every means at their disposal to keep public opinion on their side, using well-honed communication techniques, as the examples cited in this article show. Any intermediate proposal between the current situation and the total abolition of porn-prostitution is a scam.
The French pornography industry systematically uses violence against women, according to a report presented Wednesday by four French Senators, after six months of auditions following several high-profile arrests of producers and directors.
The Senators want the issue to be taken seriously by the public, and for the government to make the fight against the “commodification of bodies” a political priority.
The aim of the report, which the authors titled ‘Porno: hell behind the scenes’, is to “alert the government and public opinion about violence perpetuated and spread by and in the pornography industry, as well as on the sexist, racist, homophobic and unequal representations that it generates.”
The four Senators, from four different political parties, started their mission in February after several porn actors, directors and producers linked to the video platform French Bukkake were arrested as part of a larger investigation opened in October 2020 into human trafficking, gang rape and pimping.
Three other men were arrested in Paris on Tuesday in connection with the probe.
Violence ‘not faked’ on screen
The Senators – Annick Billon, with the UDI centrist party, part of President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling coalition; Socialist Laurence Rossignol; Alexandra Borchio-Fontimp with the centre-right Les Republicains; and Communist Laurence Cohen – found that online pornography has become increasingly violent, and it is being seen by younger and younger people.
“Sexual, physical and verbal violence are massively widespread in porn,” write the authors, who say it is systemic. The violence is “not faked, but very real for the women being filmed.”
The report says the line between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ pornography producers has been blurred with the advent of new platforms that allow people to upload their own videos.
The result, they say, is a free-for-all for producers, who often recruit economically and psychologically vulnerable young women to coerce them into doing acts on camera they might not otherwise agree to.
Some producers will force women to sign contacts ceding their image rights in perpetuity, forcing them to pay “between 3,000 and 5,000 euros, or ten times what they obtained to film the scene” in order to take them down.
And even then, once the images are out on other streaming platforms, they are “almost impossible to remove, preventing these women who were filmed to excersie their ‘right to be forgotten’”.
Of the report’s 23 recommendations, one is to impose on platforms the obligation to respond directly to removal requests from the people filmed, and not just from the owners of the videos.
Scepticism of ‘ethical’ pornography
The two major French pornography platforms, Dorcel and Jacquie et Michel, said in November 2020, after the first revelations of the investigations into the French Bukkakhe case, that they were willing to put in place ethics codes.
Others in the industry have talked about contracts detailing what sexual practices particapants are willing to do or not do.
But the Senators dismissed such proposals as window-dressing for a deeper problem of violence that needs to be addressed more systemically.
“Faced with the systemic extent of pornographic violence, and given the nature of sexual consent that can be reversed at any time, these ‘marketing’ measures do not convince the authors,” they write, adding that productions with more respectful practices are rare in the consumption of pornography today.
Protecting kids
Beyond violence on sets and onscreen, the Senators also focused on who is watching pornography and how it “normalises sexual violence of women”.
According to the report, two thirds of children 15-years-old and under, and one third of those under the age of 12 have been exposed to pornographic images, voluntarily or involuntarily, and each month, nearly a third of boys under the age of 15 visit a pornographic website.
Often the first introduction to sexuality for children, pornography “builds an eroticisation of violence and domination relations, which become norms,” the authors write, adding that it “multiplies and encourages sexist, racist and homophobic stereotypes”.
A large number of recommendations focus on the issue of age verification for pornographic websites, which has proven to be legally tricky, even as several French associations have filed lawsuits against the major platforms.
A law passed in July 2020 requires pornographic websites to put in place age controls, but the Arcom media watchdog in charge of enforcing it has been ignored by the major sites, including Pornhub, Tukif, Xhamster, Xvideos and Xnxx.
The Senators would like to see Arcom given more power to register infractions and impose “dissuasive” sanctions.
Currently, agents must first get a legal ruling to be able to order Internet service providers to block sites in France that do not put in place age limits.
Another focus for children should be better sex education in schools to address issues of pornography.
Since 2001, primary, middle and high schools are required to provide at least three sessions a year on relationships and sexuality, but the report highlights the fact that the law “is absolutely not applied.
Students often receive just a few science classes dedicated to teaching reproduction” at the end of middle school.
Parents have pushed back and schools have not put in place adequate programmes, but the Senators say it is important to teach about sex and relationships instead of letting children learn it from pornography.
Ban pornography?
Early on in the audition process for the report, the Senators met with members of feminist organisations that fight against pornography and prostitution.
France has generally had a rather abolitionist approach to prostitution, making pimping and solicitation illegal, but not banning it outright.
Throughout the audition process, the Senators drew links between prostitution and pornography, but do not go so far as calling for banning pornography.
However, they write: “wishing to open everyone’s eyes on the global system of violence against women, the authors question the existence itself of the pornography industry”.
And yet, with some 19 million people visiting French pornography sites each month, the public and political debate will not be so much on banning, but creating a framework in which productions come under more scrutiny, and distribution platforms take more responsibility for who sees what.
French prosecutors have indicated that they want 17 men to stand trial over allegations of rape and other crimes committed in the production of online pornography.
Accusations against the men include rape, gang rape, organised human trafficking and aggravated pimping, committed during video production for the French Bukkake platform, according to prosecution documents.
The prosecutors’ call for a trial comes almost a year after French police made several arrests as part of a wider investigation into violence and human trafficking in France’s pornography industry.
The accused include the top manager of the platform, his associate, a talent recruiter and around 10 porn actors, the source said.
Vulnerable women
It is now up to two judges in charge of the investigation to decide whether the trial goes ahead.
Prosecutors believe the recruiter lured young, economically vulnerable women into participating in the filming of the videos in the full knowledge that they would be subjected to “aggravated rape”, according to the document.
Investigators believe the women were told the videos would only be accessible on private Canadian websites.
In fact, the films were viewable in France and the producers demanded large sums of cash from the women to remove them – only for the images to continue to circulate online.
Prosecutors said alcohol and drugs were commonplace during the shoots.
Female actors told prosecutors that they had not been warned before going on set of the type of sexual acts expected of them.
“Sexual acts were performed on them without warning, without them being able to comprehend them, and therefore without being able to give their consent,” the document said.
This Wednesday, March 1st, the Senate voted a resolution calling for the fight against pornographic violence to be made a public policy priority. We welcome this awareness and this salutary vote and invite the government to finally act.
On September 28, 2022, the Delegation of Women’s Rights of the Senate published a report entitled: “Porn, the hell of the decor”. After months of hearings, the findings are clear. The pornographic industry is a pimp industry in the most total illegality, which commits sexist and sexual violence on an industrial scale.
Multiple lawsuits, all over the world, are multiplying. In France, the producers are under investigation for rape, aggravated pimping, human trafficking, or acts of torture and barbarism. Dozens of women are speaking out to demand justice. Pornhub is accused in the USA of knowingly distributing child pornography.
The pornographic industry, which represents 27% of online videos, broadcasts millions of sexist, racist, pedocriminal and homophobic videos. Women are humiliated, violated and tortured.
Following this report, Senators Annick BILLON, Alexandra BORCHIO FONTIMP, Laurence COHEN, and Laurence ROSSIGNOL have decided to propose an ambitious resolution asking the government to make the fight against pornographic violence a public policy priority.
The resolution states:
“that the exploitation and commodification of women’s bodies and sexuality have become an industry on an international scale that generates several billion euros in profits each year” ;
“that pornographic contents are today accessible to all and to all, without any control of the proof of majority of the Internet users, in violation of the penal code;
“that these contents convey sexist, racist and homophobic representations, constituting criminal offences”;
“that the broadcasters, platforms and social networks, knowingly ignore their responsibilities;
“that pornography is a place of learning about sexuality by default, which generates a distorted and violent vision of sexuality, traumas, early sexualization and the development of risky behaviors”;
“that the numerous illicit contents published are never completely removed, even after they have been reported”.
This resolution calls for a collective awareness and asks the government to act, starting with an interministerial plan to fight against pornographic violence, and in particular by reinforcing the means at the penal level.
This text was presented by more than 250 signatories, including 7 group presidents, gathering a record number of co-signatures in the Senate under the Fifth Republic, thus showing a strong transparent consensus on this central issue.
We welcome the Senate resolution, voted unanimously yesterday. We demand that the government, as well as the institutions that are supposed to regulate the digital world, finally become aware of the absolute priority of the fight against pornographic violence. Pornography is the school and the legitimization of sexist and sexual violence. We firmly denounce the reluctance and refusal to act of ARCOM, the CNIL and PHAROS. Their responsibility is great in the persistence of the impunity of the pornocriminal industry.
A rape investigation targeting a prominent French pornography website is prompting actresses to disclose their own experiences of abuse, a moment of reckoning for an industry where speaking out has long been taboo.
Prosecutors said last month that Jacquie and Michel, which bills itself as a hub for “amateur” porn videos, and other sites had been under investigation since July after feminist groups collected testimonies from several women.
Actresses warned that users should be aware that the concept of “amateur” porn is a misnomer and belies the experiences that performers may have had to endure.
“Those who might be tempted need to know that they abuse women,” Estelle, who asked that her real name not be published, told AFP.
She is one of a few dozen women, according to lawyers and women’s associations, who have contacted lawyers since the inquiry was opened.
Estelle said that she was 22 when she set her sights on becoming a “star” for France’s leading porn production company, Dorcel.
Unable to get a break, however, she started making videos with smaller producers, many of which were shown on Jacquie and Michel.
The experience turned into a nightmare.
One director forced her to accept certain scenes ― despite her objections ― that left her in intense pain for several days.
“He said, ‘She’s crying because she’s not used to it. Stop crying, we can’t sell that ― Smile!'” Estelle recalled, saying she was paid 250 euros ($290).
She said that she was forced to perform without a condom with a man who had lied about having tested negative for a sexually-transmitted disease but in fact had a herpes infection.
“They pay you hardly anything for doing scenes that you’ve never said ‘yes’ to.”
– Amateur acts? –
Other women told AFP about directors who suddenly demanded additional sex acts they had not been warned about in advance.
But Marion Lew, 32, who documents her adult film career on Twitter, said: “The legal system has a very difficult time recognising sexual assault.”
Additionally many women hope to force Jacquie and Michel and other sites to remove their videos, arguing they were unaware that they would be available permanently.
“Many women complain first about the images, which have the most immediate impact on their lives, and initially play down the serious violence they have suffered,” said Lorraine Questiaux, a lawyer for the Mouvement du Nid, an anti-prostitution group.
Jacquie and Michel has denied any wrongdoing, saying it only distributes films and is not responsible for how they are made.
But it has promised to stop working with anyone convicted of rape or other crimes.
Many actors and actresses scoff at the claim, saying the site effectively requires directors to meet certain aesthetic standards.
“We really need to stop with this idea of ‘amateur porn’,” said Tony Caliano, who has acted in X-rated films for the past 10 years.
“The women are always paid, and the idea is to make you think the girl next door is ready to fool around,” he said.
He indicated however that the women were not likely to have long-term “professional” careers either.
“Jacquie and Michel’s business model is based on always having a new actress,” he added.
“The average girl who gets into the industry will do just 15 or 20 scenes, over three or four months.”
And the reality is that the vast majority of women are paid just 200 to 300 euros per scene, far below the four-figure payments given to star actresses in “professional porn.”
“Most often, these are women who need to get out of a tough situation,” said Eric Morain, a lawyer representing around a dozen women trying to have their videos removed.
Many believe “it’s easy money, because it only lasts two hours,” he said.
“But in general, it almost never turns out the way it should.”
Activists hope the Jacquie and Michel inquiry will raise awareness and demolish the idea that victims know what they are getting into.
“We’re at the beginning of a #MeToo moment for pornography,” said Celine Piques, of the Osez le Feminisme! (Dare Feminism) collective, which also alerted prosecutors to victims’ accounts.
But others, including actresses, remain sceptical.
“Some are starting to speak out, but it’s not easy,” said Nikita Bellucci, one of France’s most prominent porn film stars.
“None of them have been contacted or been publicly supported” by the industry.
“The girls who talk get floods of abuse on social media,” she added.
“Since they act in porn videos, people say they have no right to present themselves as rape victims.”
Or, as Kim Equinoxx, another star actress, put it: “Some people don’t understand why they complain about rapes. For them, it’s like a boxer complaining that he’s getting hit.” (AFP)
As part of an investigation on the “French Bukkake” platform, an actor is accused of human trafficking in an organized gang and gang rape.
The investigation into the “French Bukkake” pornographic video platform is progressing. An actor was indicted for trafficking in human beings in an organized gang and gang rape to the detriment of two victims. According to a judicial source, which confirmed information from BFMTV, this 39-year-old man was placed under judicial supervision. This actor was arrested on Monday January 23, said a source familiar with the matter.
This is Tony Caliano, said several sources familiar with the matter. On the IAFD reference site, he appears as an actor in the credits of at least 600 pornographic productions between 2011 and 2021, including many productions of “Jacquie et Michel” and a certain number of Marc Dorcel. After the first crackdown in this investigation, in October 2020, he told the weekly Marianne that the actors were “equally responsible for the abuses of the producers”. “By saying nothing, by not speaking with the actress of the scene, they condone what is happening,” he added.
At least 17 people – actors, directors, producers – have already been indicted in this judicial investigation opened in October 2020 for aggravated human trafficking, gang rape or even aggravated pimping. More than forty victims have joined as civil parties, as well as associations.
Suspicions of pimping
According to elements of the investigation consulted by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the platform of “Pascal OP” identified under the name of “French Bukkake”, named after a sexual practice, first attracted attention of investigators: a subscription allowed customers to participate in priority to these collective ejaculations [bukkake], with places reserved for sessions without condoms. This system, aimed at making individuals pay in exchange for organized sexual relations, has fueled suspicions of pimping in the eyes of the courts.
According to the source familiar with the matter, the investigation is coming to an end and should be closed “by the end of the first quarter”.
The French porn industry has been in the spotlight for two years: another survey carried out in Paris since July 2020 targets “Jacquie et Michel”, the embodiment in France of amateur porn and tricolor pillar of this industry. Michel Piron, the site’s founder, was indicted in June for complicity in rape and human trafficking in an organized gang. Three other men are also prosecuted in this judicial investigation also opened for aggravated pimping or rape with torture and act of barbarism.
