The Guy Behind the GirlsDoPorn Site Is Now on the FBI’s Most Wanted List

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Though the indictment offers few details about his alleged conduct, related civil cases have revealed that Wiederhold created a GirlsDoPorn-style “mom” porn site for women over 30 years old. Michael James Pratt disappeared in the summer of 2019, just before he was indicted on federal conspiracy and sex trafficking charges stemming from what prosecutors said was a decade-long scheme to con hundreds of teens and young women into appearing in adult videos for the website he owned. “These creators of sexually explicit deepfakes have no regard whatsoever for the women and girls who are victims of sex trafficking and now being further abused through this deepfake sexual abuse,” says Clare McGlynn, a professor of law at Durham University, who works to counter image-based abuse.

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“Even when victims told Garcia how the scheme had devastated their lives, he showed no regard for their well-being. The crime was utterly callous in nature and there is no excuse or justification for his conduct, which was driven purely by greed. Hopefully today’s sentence will offer them a sense of justice.” Grossman praised prosecutors Joseph Green, Alexandra Foster and Sabrina Feve; FBI Special Agents; and the U.S. Garcia told these women that the videos would be published only on DVDs and sold overseas.

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The most recent demand letter from the victims’ lead attorney Brian Holm states that “Cloudflare itself is knowingly participating in this criminal venture” by providing services to these sites. The videos persisted with repeat reuploads to other tube sites like PornHub, a problem that has historically tormented anyone who’s needed to get their videos removed. In October, 50 victims of GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys won a settlement with MindGeek, owner of the PornHub and tube site empire; the terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Michael Pratt made $17 million from GirlsDoPorn, court docs say

• Another woman said an anonymous person sent a video she appeared in to her grandmother.
• Given that revenge porn distributors have historically evaded punishment due to insufficient legal guidelines, copyright is a useful tool—copyright holders can fine websites up to $150,000 per image if they don’t comply with DMCA takedown requests.
• District Judge Janis Sammartino, who has sentenced all the other defendants in the GirlsDoPorn case other than website owner Michael James Pratt , whose case remains ongoing.
• And in their online life specifically, recent research suggests that supporting your teen to make decisions for themselves online, and listening to them talk about online experiences without immediate judgment, may encourage them to talk to you about uncomfortable or risky online experiences with you rather than hiding them.
• “Rather than the mere headshots and clothing photoshoot (sic) that she had agreed to fly to San Diego to do, Pratt began demanding that Plaintiff film nude and sexually explicit videos.

The website and its operators were also sued by 22 women featured in its videos and a San Diego judge awarded the women nearly $13 million at the end of a months-long civil trial. Once the women discovered their videos were posted online, the website owners ignored requests to take the videos down and cut contact with the women altogether. Many of the women testified that Garcia sexually assaulted them, and spoke of how the videos’ existence continues to plague them years after the fact, destroying familial relationships and employment prospects. Some of the women said they attempted suicide after the videos were released and continue to seek therapy to this day. In November, Pratt and Girls Do Porn producer Kevin Gibson allegedly harassed Holm by photoshopping his face into porn to make it look like he was posing with two male porn actors.

The civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions have also entangled popular free porn sites such as PornHub. Late last year, Pornhub’s parent company agreed to pay more than $1.8 million to resolve a criminal probe alleging it profited from sex trafficking through its hosting of GirlsDoPorn videos. As teens’ sexual identity becomes more established, teens and young adults may turn to the internet for information.

The report says there was a “meaningful decrease” in searches for CSAM on Pornhub and that at least “in part” the chatbot and warning messages appear to have played a role. Pornhub, which is owned by parent company Aylo (formerly MindGeek), uses a list of 34,000 banned terms, across multiple languages and with millions of combinations, to block searches for child abuse material, a spokesperson for the company says. It is one way Pornhub tries to combat illegal material, the spokesperson says, and is part of the company’s efforts aimed at user safety, after years of allegations it has hosted child exploitation and nonconsensual videos. When people in the UK have searched for any of the terms on Pornhub’s list, the warning message and chatbot have appeared. During the trial, Evie gets on the stand and states that in her pornography videos, she wasn’t forced to do anything and that everything she did was just an act, but that she did not consent to what Daniel and Matt did to her.

• According to recent studies, the growing consumption of Internet pornography mainly in male population becomes an increasing problem, which is closely linked to compulsive sexual behavior.
• The defendants represented that the videos would be sold exclusively on DVDs overseas for private use and provided other women as references, who lied to the victims, claiming they had filmed videos and no one had ever found out.
• Website owners Michael James Pratt, 36, and Matthew Isaac Wolfe, 37, and porn actor Ruben Andre Garcia, 31, were sued by 22 women who claimed they were deceived and coerced into making explicit sex films without knowing the images would be posted on the internet.
• But legal repercussions from those pre-purge days — including federal monitoring and an ever-growing number of lawsuits — are still rippling through Pornhub and its network of user-generated porn sites.

“I can remember being so worried to tell him that I was just 17,” a woman identified as “Victim K” told the court during a hearing for the ring’s main performer, Ruben Andre Garcia, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in 2020 and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2021. SAN DIEGO – Adult film performer and producer Ruben Andre Garcia was sentenced in federal court today to 20 years in prison for conspiring with the owners of the adult websites GirlsDoPorn (GDP) and GirlsDoToys (GDT) to recruit young women to appear in sex videos for adult websites using force, fraud, and coercion. Sexting behaviors by adolescents and young adults are correlated with riskier sexual behaviors. The transmission (including the receipt) of sexually explicit texts may be illegal for children under the age of 18 in many states and the sending of sexually explicit photos of minors may be considered sexual exploitation or child pornography under the law. While your teen may trust the person on the other end of the conversation, it’s important that they understand the risks of sexting. According to current DSM-5, dependence on online pornography does not represent a separate syndrome, but as some researchers and clinicians suggest, it can be included as a part of a hypersexual disorder (Kafka, 2010).