In an unusual win of sorts, a California judge on Thursday ordered that 22 women be paid $12.7 million or Rs 91 crore in damages. 22 women had come out four years ago, against a porn site called GirlsDoPorn and said that they were coerced into making porn videos.
The women said that were lured to San Diego in the pretext of being offered modelling projects and pressured to sign contracts. And then were pushed into doing porn under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
The site features women aged between 18-20, who are often college students. The site also advertises them as 'amateurs' in porn videos.
The site has been accused of a breach in contract and for lying to women about how their explicit videos would be distributed.
The propietor Michael Pratt, videographer Matthew Wolfe, administrative assistant Valerie Moser and male performer Ruben “Andre” Garcia have been charged with sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion.
"It's an extraordinarily unique and incredibly valuable decision," Ben Bull, vice president and general counsel at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said. He also said that the lawsuit and its verdict will encourage more such victims to come forward.
In the lawsuit, the women insisted that they now had ownership rights to the videos, as they featured in it. The judge also enables the women to erase all videos featuring them off the internet.
Some women testified that while they accepted to appear in the explicit videos for various reasons including paying for college, the publicity subsequently ruined their lives.
