This programme contains very strong language, scenes of a sexual nature and graphic accounts of sexual abuse
So we are going to film the consent talk. All right? Yeah.
Do you feel OK with spanking? Mm-hm.
OK, so we'll try to stick with some, like, medium spanking, if that's OK?
Head to toe, do you mind your hair being touched?
That's totally fine. Totally OK? I'm cool with that, yeah.
Totally OK, great. Chest, back, arms, do you mind being touched?
That's totally cool. Cool with me. OK, great.
I'm going to keep the same safe words,
I'm going to use "mercy" or "yellow" and "red" or "stop" and "cut,"
look into the camera if I need to.
OK, we got it.
THEY LAUGH
In Los Angeles, I was traversing a battleground over consent.
WOMEN GIGGLING
One of the criticisms that's been made of you
is that you can be pushy.
Who...say...that?
The vast and lucrative industry of adult film has been
transformed by social media,
with a new generation of performers making fortunes on their own online,
and using their new power to call out alleged predatory behaviour...
I called him, he said everything was fine, you know?
"I'm Ron Jeremy. You're safe with me."
..while an old guard is pushing back at what they see
as trial by Twitter.
The women have come up with a narrative and script
that is unbelievably similar.
I was attempting to figure out what good practice looks like...
Are you...flirting with me?
I'm your stepsister, that's wrong.
..in a world dedicated to pushing boundaries of taste and taboo.
He allegedly raped her, then, like,
signed a napkin or a piece of paper,
and gave it to her as an autograph.
This programme contains very strong language, scenes of sexual violence, and scenes of a sexual nature
In a $4 million castle outside Portland,
one of the biggest names in porn was about to do a shoot.
What should I wear?
I think Agent Provocateur is going to be best.
Maybe something red or white would be good.
What about this one? This one's new.
That one works. OK.
A performer with ten years in the business,
these days, Mia Malkova works almost exclusively from home,
shooting with her boyfriend, Justin,
and uploading daily to social media sites.
OK, perfect, right there.
Will you turn your booty towards the light a little bit more?
Right there, freeze, eyes to me.
Right there, perfect.
So, how many subscribers do you have on Instagram?
Erm, 9.4 million.
And what about OnlyFans?
Erm, I think I might have 40...
..40,000 right now?
Which sounds like much less,
but they're all paying is the big difference, right?
That is the big difference. Yes.
Three, two, one.
OK, sweet.
That's good. Mm-hm.
Would you be comfortable giving me a rough idea of how much you're
making through OnlyFans?
Mm-hm, yeah. Erm...
SHE EXHALES 150 to 250, depending on the month.
150,000 to 250,000? Yeah.
Wow. I love OnlyFans.
I didn't make that while I was shooting for companies.
And I'm in complete control of everything.
I do it from home, I do what I like, how I like.
It's just a better quality of living.
All right, action.
Mia is at the top of a new economy of adult film.
Walk forward, towards the chair.
One of the most successful of thousands of young performers
using social media, who have transformed the industry
almost beyond recognition.
That's exactly what I want, right there, perfect.
Able to make money on their own terms,
many have used their new power to police the industry and establish
better standards for how sex takes place.
In Pasadena, north of Los Angeles,
I had an appointment with a couple who work in porn.
Can we come in?
Named Michael Vegas and Siouxsie Q,
they are two of the new generation of porn activists.
Who's that?
They were shooting content for their social media accounts
with their friends Honey Milk and Lola Fae.
Do you want to do some... pulling some things to the side?
Sure, wait, like, my holes?
Yeah, they can't see it, but I can.
"Holes" doesn't sound very romantic, Michael.
Well...it's the romance hole, Louis.
If you put "romance" in front of it, that sounds much better.
Today, for our scene, erm,
we are doing a foursome,
and we are making it fit with all of our social media platforms.
And so there's going to be some pegging,
and there's going to be some... Pegging is?
Pegging is, like, a strapped-on dildo in a harness for penetration.
Someone will be pegging me, hopefully...
At least, probably all of us. ..if all is going according to plan.
Yeah. And you like being pegged, don't you?
Oh, I love it so much. Gosh, you can ask any...
You can ask anybody in the business. He likes it the most.
I love it so much, it just really...
Just hits the right spot, is the best way I can put it.
One, two, three. One, two, three.
What's it like? Is it weirdly empowering, or just,
it is what it is?
It's great to walk into an encounter that, like,
where you know you're not the one being penetrated.
Yeah! Is it? But why would that be great?
I mean, what do you usually do during sex?
Do you penetrate, or are you penetrated?
Most of the time...
HE LAUGHS
Yeah, if I get lucky, I'm the one penetrating.
OK, great, so you can imagine that flipping that and doing
something different would feel different, right?
Would feel very different, for sure. Yeah, that's all.
Is one of these Michael's?
This one. This one.
That's not real size, though.
It's scaled up. Scaled up, yeah.
Loves it. That's my happy place.
SENSUAL MOANING Yes.
I was curious to speak to Michael and Siouxsie about
the changes going on in the industry.
Oh, mercy! Mercy!
With the pegging successfully concluded...
And we're back.
..and everyone more relaxed, there was a moment to talk.
Wow. How was it?
Outstanding. Great. The scene went very fluid and smooth.
No surprises? Yeah. I feel like it went surprisingly good.
Now, with social media platforms, performers have the ability to
call out bad experiences, right?
Yeah. And go public.
And I just wondered if you had any observations about that?
Historically, as sex workers,
we haven't had any way to report violence or problems against us.
Mm-hm. There's no way to stay safe as a sex worker.
So, yelling out loud in a crowd, which is social media,
is the only means of, like, trying to keep your friends
safe from predators. Yeah.
And a performer who felt violated in some way would be going to
the police and maybe saying,
"I expected to do vaginal, but anal happened."
Right.
Or, "A male hand came from behind the camera and pinched my bum."
And the police might say,
"Well, these are academic distinctions." Exactly. Right?
"What is the big deal?"
I consented to something, and then something else happened
that was without my consent.
I don't know why that's hard to understand.
You know, like, no matter what the situation.
Michael and I met on a hardcore gang bang set.
But, you know, you'll go for a time and then you'll pause.
It's not a faux pas to be, like, "Hey, is your knee OK?
"You want to change positions?"
And so there really is a true conversation that's happening with
your scene partner and, like, that is consent all the way through.
So how would you characterise what's going on right now?
Is this a live issue?
Some of the top, erm, like, names in the industry,
some of the top earners in the industry are in a position
where they will only shoot for the right partner
and the right amount of money,
and the right, sort of, convenience to their day.
You know, it's really...
Why, because they have the leverage now, through their own platforms,
to say no? Exactly. They have the leverage to say no.
Is there a battle within the industry?
Like, how is it taking place?
Some of these old dudes that were here to be creeps
are frustrated and leave.
They can't... "I can't work like this,
"I might hurt somebody's feelings, or I might assault them," like,
yeah, you probably will. You shouldn't be here, go away.
Thanks, bye. It's a reckoning.
Out with the old, in with the new.
There will always be predators in any industry.
But the more that we talk about things,
and the more that we weed them out,
the more scared that they are, honestly.
The shift taking place within porn reflects changes
in the wider culture - with a younger generation pushing
for clearer conversations about consent,
and an old guard standing accused of harbouring predators.
ON COMPUTER: Have you done already some blow job, or...?
Yes, yes, I do, erm, blow jobs all the time.
One of those under suspicion is a 58-year-old director and performer
who goes by the porn name Pierre Woodman.
Have you been tied up? Erm, no, but I've been wanting to.
You would like? Yeah, I would love to be tied up.
Pierre's scenes are known for being on the more extreme end.
On several occasions, he's been accused
of violating performers' boundaries -
accusations he denies.
Though he often works with American talent,
Pierre is based 6,000 miles from LA, in Budapest.
He was shooting at a hotel.
Hello. Hello.
You must be Pierre. Hello. How do you do? Good.
Nice to meet you. What's your name? Alberto.
Alberto, nice to meet you. Louis.
Scheherazade. Nice to meet you. Scheherazade.
Do you speak English?
A little bit. A little bit? A little bit, yeah.
When girls like Scheherazade come from Spain, doesn't speak English,
I come to translate.
So you're the director? Mm-hm.
And you'll be doing the shooting, as well? Yes.
And performing?
Unfortunately, yes. Yeah. HE CHUCKLES
Scheherazade?
Scheherazade? How old are you?
SHE SPEAKS IN PORTUGUESE 25.
And, erm, how many scenes have you done so far?
ALBERTO TRANSLATES Three.
Just three.
Am I right in thinking you videotape everything?
Everything. Even you now. So have you got cameras going?
Yes. Where? Ah... Hidden?
Yeah, of course, since you arrived here, everything is recorded.
Really? That's making you smile.
Sorry. It is the truth.
This thing saved me many, many, many times.
Some girl accused me of some things that I never did, like,
"Oh, I didn't want to do this, I didn't want to do..."
Last time, there was a British girl who said she was, er,
slapped against her will.
Or one girl who said, "Oh, he didn't pay me,"
or, "He did something I didn't want to do,"
or blah, blah, blah. Come on.
The big problem now is MeToo.
Since there is a scandal with Harvey Weinstein,
the MeToo and all this wave, many girls think,
"Wow, time for me to get money."
What would be the motive for a woman to accuse you of, erm,
deceiving her or doing something against her will?
You ask me this question?
Mm, because they want to be successful performers, right?
And they want to go on and work again, so in a way it's...
There's a risk for them, which is if you make a false claim then...
OK. ..you are going to probably be blacklisted, right?
Most of the time when the girl makes the complaint,
it's already when they have finished with this job.
Some girls who today are 30 years old or 40 years old,
and they work 20 years ago,
those girls, because they have a simple life,
a problem with the boyfriend or whatever,
and they are in need of money,
and they try to use the MeToo as a way to get money from people.
This is one situation.
So, petite lady, my God... has she already tried anal sex?
She's OK to try today?
OK.
It's quite a big step, to do anal for the first time.
This is why, for me, I prefer a girl like her who never tried,
because in her brain she don't have any... No trauma.
..trauma - she has anxiety, of course, but she don't have
any personal trauma about it, so it's perfect.
For me, this is the best.
Could we say you specialise in performing with young women who are
doing anal for the first time?
Yeah, my specificity - is correct? Sure.
It's to do the anal sex, because I have a secret.
My grandfather teach me one secret for that when I was very young.
Your grandfather taught you? Yes, yes, yes.
And also, because I don't have a penis like this, it helps a lot,
because also the size is important.
You have a relatively small penis?
17 centimetres, I don't know if it's small.
Basically, when I was a young guy, I was thinking,
"Oh, I don't have a huge penis." But today, for me it's an advantage.
All right, Scheherazade,
can you please show me your body, if you don't mind?
ALBERTO TRANSLATES
Go.
Oh, my God, she has nice lingerie.
Look at this.
And, please, if you don't mind, turn around.
She feel good, or she feel bad?
No problem. OK, sit down, please.
Up the legs.
Beautiful, petite pussy.
I love her face so much, she's so beautiful.
OK, vamos.
It's very easy...
It being her first anal scene, Scheherazade was receiving
a higher-than-usual rate of 1,500 euros.
The shoot was happening in a suite three floors down.
Before the action, there would be a quick orientation.
Please, Scheherazade, come with me.
Scene explanation.
She wants to be shocked, or not?
How are you with kissing?
If one girl don't want to kiss you, generally she turns her face.
So it's very easy to know if she wants or she don't want.
Imagine you go somewhere, and you don't want something.
Like, when you go to the restaurant.
Me, I don't want onion in my plate.
The first thing I say to the guy - or when I go to McDonald's -
"I want a hamburger, but no onion."
LOUIS SPEAKS IN PORTUGUESE
SHE LAUGHS
All right, talk to you in a little bit, then.
Thank you so much, guys, see you later. Thank you. Bye.
THEY SPEAK IN FRENCH
Having retired upstairs as the scene took place,
I was mainly conscious of what Scheherazade might be feeling,
having her first-ever anal sex on camera,
with someone whose language she didn't speak...
..and no-one else around.
KNOCK ON DOOR
Two hours later, they emerged.
Welcome back. Oh, see who opens the door for us!
Hello. Hello.
I didn't expect to see you here again. How are you?
How was it?
Ah, for me, good, but I don't know, you must ask her.
A good experience?
I think she enjoyed it a lot,
but the beginning of the situation was tough for five minutes,
and after, bam, everything goes well.
She had hard times, too.
At the very beginning, hard times?
She thought, "I'm not going to do it.
"I'm not going to be able to do it." Why?
"Because I never did this before."
What was your reason for doing this today?
"I'm in porn. I knew that Pierre would be the right person to
"start with this anal thing in the porn business."
Mm-hm. And your plan is to continue in porn for a number of years?
Yes. For the moment, yes.
Mm-hm.
SHE LAUGHS
You know, you've said that you specialise in having anal sex
with female performers for the first time.
Right, that's something... That's true.
Can you see that, in a way, that's a high-risk project for you?
Because, actually, by definition, they don't necessarily know
what they're getting into, right?
And then also you're very... Sorry, Louis.
If I propose right now to fuck your ass,
you will not know what we speak about?
Come on, are you taking me like a stupid one?
If I say, "Louis, would you like me to fuck your ass now?"
you will say, "I'm sorry, I don't know what you are speaking about."
If you said to me, "I'm going to fuck you in the arse,"
and I wouldn't know what that...
But I wouldn't really know what that was like. OK.
I know what the physical act is.
Because you're not gay, you don't know what it is, OK, fine, and then?
And then what? Will you say yes or not?
You know, it's just strange. I'm a 51-year-old man.
You have to decide yourself if you want to say yes or no.
I'm not an 18-year-old, erm, girl.
If I was committed to trying to make it in porn,
but I also hadn't really thought through all the aspects of
what that meant, and I thought I might dip a toe in it,
but I also had come from an upbringing that was maybe
conservative or... I mean, there's so many dimensions to it.
Please. You are 18 years old, you are supposed to be able to know
what you do or what you don't do.
In America, at 16 years old you can drive a car,
you can have a gun at 18.
But you need to be 21 to drink one beer.
It's not me who do the law.
What is wrong if I ask one girl,
"Are you OK to get fucked in the ass by me?" and she said yes?
I am a bad guy because she said yes?
I'm supposed to speak to her in a way that she said yes,
but finally she didn't want really to do it, blah, blah, blah.
It's not my concern.
I'm here to do a job.
With Pierre, I had the sense of someone on the defensive,
who felt himself under siege
in a world where the rules were changing.
I was curious to learn more about how the practices of
the new generation of social media performers
were intersecting with the old ways of the industry.
I had an appointment with a webcam model who goes by Ginger Banks.
Ginger's been camming nearly 12 years.
In her entire career, she's made only a handful of studio films.
She makes her living almost exclusively from OnlyFans.
Hi, Ginger? Hi! Hello. Louis. How do you do?
Good. How are you? Nice to meet you, can we come in?
Yeah, please come in.
The meeting began with some quick content creation.
Oh, this looks cool... the light through it.
SHE SMOOCHES
Tell me about what you do.
OnlyFans is mostly what I do right now.
I use it to show the behind-the-scenes of my life,
naked pictures and videos of myself,
and there's also videos of me having sex that I have, you know, created.
I'll get naked and dance around and play with myself.
That's my daily work.
And it goes up on OnlyFans
and people can take out a subscription to see your content?
Yeah, it's basically whatever you want to put behind this paywall.
You know, you lock it behind this paywall,
and they pay however much you want per month.
It's, like, I think $3 a month,
$3 a month up to $50 a month.
A lot of them just want to see an extra look into your life.
This video is with Chanel Santini. OK.
She's a really popular trans performer.
Oh, my gosh, I was so excited when she asked to come over.
I missed you.
I wanted to have sex with her outside of work,
so why not do it on camera and get paid to do it?
It looks like she might be, um, choking you on her dick.
Erm...
I don't know, maybe for a second or two.
Of her thousands of videos,
probably Ginger's best known is one she posted on Twitter in 2017,
calling out porn's most famous male performer, Ron Jeremy.
So, do you want to talk about how this first came onto your radar?
The whole Ron Jeremy...
It started with a personal encounter with him, didn't it?
I thought that he was just one of the multiple handsy people
at the expo that I ran into.
This was 2016? Yeah.
And what happened?
He grabbed my ass through my jeans as I was walking by
and meeting him for the first time.
And I just said, "Ew," and walked away.
It was the cam models.
The cam models started coming to these expos.
We were the ones that were working from the safety of our homes,
so we weren't on set getting groped by directors -
that shit wasn't normal to us.
It was, like, laughable to me that people could even think
of it as something that you would just excuse -
excuse and then give him access to more people to do it in the future.
So that's when I started compiling the evidence
and made that YouTube video.
There have been allegations of rape
and sexual assault against Ron Jeremy
that go back as far as August 2003.
Here we have Ron Jeremy
grabbing Tonya Tate's ass.
Here we have Ron Jeremy fondling the tit of a random female
out in front of a strip club.
How does Ron Jeremy just being a porn star
give him the right to assault these females,
because the woman happened to be sexual?
Why is that OK?
Are we really still slut-shaming women to the point
where we take away their basic human rights?
At what point did you realise, in addition to the groping,
there were serious allegations of rape?
There was someone who had added allegations of rape
to the Twitter thread.
He allegedly raped her, then, like, signed a napkin
or a piece of paper, and gave it to her as an autograph.
And it's not the only person who's said that about him.
He's, like, a giant monster
just going around, like, sexually assaulting people.
It's classic MeToo in the sense of being initiated on social media,
on Twitter. Yeah.
A kind of community forms,
experiences are shared,
and that leads to real-world change.
Yeah, 100%.
So it was like a domino effect of, like, one thing happening that led
to another thing happening, you know, which is what the detectives
and the prosecutors said got them interested in actually
finally bringing charges against him.
Ron Jeremy's alleged offences span nearly 30 years.
For many younger performers, his ability to continue working
for so long amid widespread rumours of his offending
illustrated a problem in the industry.
I wanted to meet one of those affected.
In 1997, aged 25,
Jen Mondello had been attempting to find her way
into an adult film career under the name Jennifer Steele.
Ron Jeremy had offered to act as her mentor.
20 years on, with 100 films behind her,
she is retired from porn and lives in Florida.
Hi, Jen? Hi, how are you?
OK. Nice to meet you. Louis. Nice to meet you too.
Come on in.
Oh, nice and cool in here. Yeah.
Can we look at some of your old memorabilia, if you have it?
I have a whole box.
How long were you in the industry?
About ten years.
Like, my movie span is about a 10-year span.
So, shall I start pulling stuff out? Sure, yeah.
This is an 8x10 that I would sign for somebody, you know.
The tan lines are part of the look, right? Oh, yeah.
I had my tanning bikini that gave the perfect lines,
so I had the same line every time.
Makes it feel more taboo. I guess so. Naughty.
I was young and I cared.
I wouldn't go that far now.
Am I right in saying you have a lot of happy memories?
Oh, yeah.
I have to say that my gang bang scenes were the most fun.
How many gang bangs did you do?
Somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen.
And typically how many people would it be?
The most was 20. It was the Mexican gang bang.
The Mexican anal gang bang.
You did that? Yeah, I did that.
How was that? It's not something that I would enjoy now but...
What was Mexican about it?
All the, erm, all the men were Mexican.
Here's a DVD.
"Jennifer Steele Does Amsterdam 420."
What does that mean?
We went to Amsterdam,
and we just picked out a bunch of random dudes at Cannabis Cup,
brought them back to the hotel and fucked them.
They stuck a bong in my ass and then smoked pot out of it.
It looks like you're with James Corden.
No, there's no James Corden. Look at him...
SHE LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY
That's not James Corden!
All right. Shall we talk about what happened?
Sure. Yeah.
When Jen had met Ron Jeremy,
she was working as an exotic dancer in Oregon.
He invited her to Los Angeles, landing her a job as a model
in a photo shoot he was doing for Hustler Magazine.
I went down to Los Angeles,
he picked me up from the airport,
he took me to the Hustler Studio.
In the Hustler Studio,
we got all ready for the picture and everything.
He kept shaking his dick in front of everybody
and he couldn't get it up.
Pressure on him to basically deliver "solid wood."
Mm-hm. So you felt bad for him?
I felt bad for him. He can't get it up - what's he going to do?
And then he asked if I would bend over in front of him
so he could look and jack off and give him a visual fluff,
and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, totally."
This is something I would do... In the bathroom?
In the bathroom.
So I bent over for him so he could look.
He put his hand on me, and I said, "What are you doing?"
And then he said, "I'm not doing anything,"
and then he stuck his dick in me.
And that's, you know...
And I tried to push back,
but by pushing back I was pushing forward
because I, like, had my face in a paper towel holder.
There was nowhere for me to go.
And then I think once I started struggling,
that's when, like, I mean, as I said,
it was only just a few seconds, you know.
He apologised. Like, "I'm so sorry - I'll never do that again."
And I felt safe enough to get into the car.
So, are you OK to talk about what happened when you went back to his,
was it an apartment or a house? It was an apartment. Mm-hm.
Yeah. I made the assumption that
I was going to have my own room, or at least a couch.
I was trying to be polite about it,
telling him that sex was not part of our deal,
and he told me that that wasn't an issue.
In fact, he made me feel kind of silly even saying it, you know.
His couch was all full of, like, movies and stuff,
like movies and magazines and stuff like that.
He said, "Just give me 20 minutes
"and I'll get this all cleaned off for you."
And I'm like, "I'm not waiting." I was exhausted.
So I literally went over to the corner of his mattress
and I just crashed up against the wall.
I'm wearing my jeans, I'm wearing my tank top,
like, I'm wearing my clothes,
so there was no, you know...
And then he turned on the light and he woke me up.
And he said, "You're going to get interviewed a lot
"and one of the things that I'm well known for
"is that I eat the best pussy in the business,
"and I want women to say that when they're getting interviewed."
And I told him, I said, "Oh, you know, I'll...
"I'll say you killed it," you know?
And he was like, "No, no, no, I want to really do it."
And he said, "If you let me do this, please,
"I'm doing all this stuff for you and everything,
"I'm introducing you to all these people.
"If you let me do this, I promise I will leave you alone.
And I'm thinking, "Well, he should leave me alone, anyway,
"but I have a deal here, so..."
I ended up going for it and I took my pants off,
he went down on me.
I came,
and then after that...
His pants were off.
He took his pants off during that somehow, without me knowing, erm...
..and then he raped me.
He was raping me anally and he stopped when I was crying
and bleeding, erm...
In your account, you actually say he says... I'm sorry.
All the, it's all... Are you OK? Yeah, like, it's just all...
I don't think Ron Jeremy's a bad person,
but at that moment there was a monster that was there
and that was...
I knew that my options were done.
It was like, there's only so many noes you can give
before you just run out of noes.
And, like, when he gave me that look, that was when I froze,
that was when I had that, that was when the switch flipped of
humanity's just not what I think it is.
I mean, it just...it...
He knew what he was doing.
And it didn't put you off, erm,
getting into adult film, did it, cos, basically,
the following year you went into it?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Sort of with both feet, kind of thing. Oh, yeah, balls in.
SHE LAUGHS
It made me feel like I was taking control
of my own sexuality after it had been taken from me.
But it's about choice.
Yeah, yeah, it's about choice.
Like, I don't leave a gang bang feeling like I've been traumatised
as long as everything was consensual.
But if somebody's raping me
and they're doing something without their consent,
then that's traumatising.
How important is it to you that Ron Jeremy should get convicted?
I hope he does get convicted
because I think, honestly, that for him to be in a medical facility
would be the best thing for him.
I think separating him from society is necessary.
But as far as my healing goes,
what has happened already with the system is what I needed.
Erm, and that was for...
That was for the DA to tell me that he believed my story.
And that it was rape and that I was raped
and that it mattered, despite what I did for a living.
Jen's need to be believed spoke to a common feeling among sex workers
that their accounts of abuse are less likely to be taken seriously
than other people's,
simply because of what they do.
With Ron Jeremy now awaiting trial for multiple counts of rape,
it seemed that might be changing.
Back in LA,
and I'd been thinking more about power imbalances in the industry
and how young performers might be influenced by older men
to take part in sex they might not be OK with,
in private and on set.
I had an appointment at a shoot by a female-run studio called Bellesa,
that was said to be giving its stars more control.
Hi, Jacky? Yeah.
Louis. Hi, Louis, it's nice to meet you.
May I come in? Yeah, come on in. Thank you.
The director went by the porn name Jacky St James.
Where do you need me?
In the middle of the bed, please.
The set-up for the scene drew on something that had really happened
to the two performers, who'd been friends but had fallen out.
You're going to talk directly to me.
Directly to you? Yes. OK.
They were Michael Vegas,
whom I'd met poolside in Pasadena...
Slide over slightly.
..and Bunny Colby.
What is your history with Bunny Colby?
Well, we had done a scene together.
Everything went great.
And then we had a tumultuous interaction
on the old social media.
You guys have never worked one on one? We have not.
We've only done a boy-boy girl-girl-girl together.
Any expectations for how it will go when he walks through these doors?
Erm, I think it will be a little awkward at first,
but I think it will be fine.
Ta-da! Oh, my God. Nice 'tache!
Oh, thanks.
It's so I can smell you better.
I wish I had curly hair, it's amazing.
Anything specific you want to do?
I love giving and receiving oral sex.
But I really love giving it.
Yeah. Excellent, I love communication like that.
So, what's going on in the culture somewhat
is that there are new conversations about consent.
In the college campus setting
they developed a concept of "enthusiastic consent."
Like, consent on its own isn't enough.
It has to be, like, an enthusiastic yes.
You're not kind of tolerating the sex.
Now, clearly, in the porn world that's not always going to apply
because it's a job, right? Yep.
You're not going to love every time you go out and have sex for work.
And so, within that space, it feels as though
there's the potential for bad sex to take place,
or sex which you don't even know if you're completely OK with.
The onus of responsibility lies on pretty much everyone that's
involved, including the girl, the guy, the producers,
when the girl is hired - their agent.
So, everyone's communicating.
"It's going to be this long, this is what you're going to dealing with.
"Are you comfortable with the performer you're working with?"
These are all things that should be taken care of prior
to the arrival on set.
Let's say the performer signed off a scene,
and then it's just uncomfortable
and they're not enjoying it at all.
But they don't feel
they can speak out.
I mean, what do you then do with that?
How we address that is, I guess,
creating an environment where people feel safe to do so, but...
..I think a lot of times you'll see performers just saying yes
to something they consented to,
but maybe they're uncomfortable, maybe they're in pain
and just are gutting it out until the scene's done.
I think that one of the reasons,
and it's one thing we always say at Bellesa, is,
"No matter what, if you don't do this scene,
"we are still paying you,"
whereas a lot of studios hold it over the head of the person -
"Well, if you don't finish this scene, you're not getting paid."
SOFT MOANING
You guys have fun?
Oh, yes. Yes.
I really appreciated it. I like you. Yes.
Nice job, guys, I wasn't allowed to talk to you before so, apologies...
I told them! ..if it seemed like I was being rude.
Thank you. Nice to see you. Much appreciated.
Got to stay in the zone. Yeah.
Personally, it felt great for me.
I got to very much enjoy your body. Thank you.
Your body language seemed like you enjoyed it. I did enjoy it.
So, it's a win in my book.
Sometimes it is more work and sometimes it is more enjoyable,
but I would never do something that I didn't at least have
a good proportion of enjoyment at.
Can you reflect on changes you've seen?
It's nice to see that there is a bit more acceptance
of people speaking out
and that there are more options that we have
even though they're not perfect.
But there is still a lot of places
where you need to be your own advocate. Mm-hm.
And remembering that, I think, is very important.
I think, Bunny,
you had an experience with someone in the industry.
There was just one situation at,
not even a shoot, it was like a party thing,
that I got paid to go to.
And, you know, my big problem wasn't even what happened there.
I got assaulted, but it was fairly minor,
somebody groped me, which is still inappropriate -
don't do that. Mm-hm.
My problem was...how the people I reached out to
afterwards reacted, and that's really...
Can we say that it was your agent?
Yes. And that's somebody that you need to protect you.
That's somebody you are reaching out to,
to make sure that your work is safe.
The real, I think, trauma of the situation
was being told that what happened to me didn't happen. Mm-hm.
Like, being gaslighted and told, "Oh, that didn't happen to you,
"and even if it did happen to you, who cares?"
Like, that's essentially what I was told.
And that's not allowing people to be in a position in this industry
where they're able to advocate for themselves
and able to make good choices about what they want to do,
and feel fine at the end of the day, coming away from it.
And what was his name? Derek Hay.
For the best part of a decade,
Derek Hay was the most powerful agent in porn.
But along with his power
came rumours that he was controlling and vindictive.
Hey, you've got a busy day here, today, haven't you? Mm-hm.
What have you got going on?
I'm not sure how many shoots we're doing today
but there's today's schedule.
I'd met him on a visit to the industry in 2011.
Two scenes was boy-girl scenes, and one was anal.
Yeah.
Had you ever done anal before?
I, actually, like, in my real life
I really don't do much anal.
That would suggest maybe you don't enjoy it that much?
I'm not sure that I agree with your question.
I can think of a lot of things that we don't do in our personal life
that we do at work. Yeah.
Seven years later, five performers he represented
brought a legal case, suing to get out of their contracts,
alleging sexual misconduct by Derek.
They also said he'd steered them into doing illegal escorting work
for a company called The Luxury Companion.
In many ways, Derek represented that old guard
of industry power brokers I'd been hearing about.
Derek lives in Las Vegas.
He'd agreed to speak, asking that we meet
at a tattoo parlour he owns in the city.
Hello, hello. Can I come in?
You can. How are you doing? Good. You must be Jamie?
I am Jamie, nice to meet you. Louis. Nice to meet you.
Hi. Derek.
You've kindly arranged for Jamie to be here.
Jamie, you're relatively new to the business, would you say?
Yeah, about eight months. About eight months.
Eight months of shooting, yeah.
So, tell me how you relate to Derek - he's your agent?
He's my agent, yes.
I'm really grateful to Derek
for immediately making me feel like a respected worker,
which is what every performer can ask for, yeah.
You probably would have noticed
that Derek had some legal situations he was dealing with?
I was familiar with the, you know,
legal trouble around this agency,
but so much of what you read about porn is stigmatised
or sensationalised.
And I just thought I could be a better judge myself.
So, one of the things you've been dealing with is a labour commission.
And it found against you, correct?
That was last year.
Ah, not completely true, no.
In part they found against me, yeah.
But that's appealed to superior court.
You've made an appeal.
And they have not renewed you license in LA,
is that right?
Er, that's another, er, subject
that's being contested.
As it stands, could we say that, right now,
right now do you have a licence to be an agent in LA?
I have a licence in Nevada and in Florida.
So does that put a crimp in your ability
to represent young talent like Jamie?
Er, no, cos I'm still a licensed agent.
Actually, I don't think there's any agent who's ever held licenses
in three states.
So, this is a little bit private, maybe intrusive,
but I'll just try it out, put it out there.
Say it ain't so! DEREK LAUGHS
OK. So, are you and Derek in any way involved?
No. No, we have a wonderful professional relationship.
Because Derek has form in dating clients,
models, he represents. Correct, Derek?
I've dated a number of models in the past,
but you won't find any recently.
No. Have you stopped doing that?
For many years, yes.
OK. Jamie, if it's all right with you, I might have a sit down
with Derek now. Is that OK?
Yes, sounds great.
If I can just pause for two minutes -
this is an artist that's going to do a tattoo.
Let me just see if she wants to come in and get set up. OK.
The five models suing Derek painted a picture of a company
where Derek pressured performers into sex.
Two also alleged he'd assaulted them.
Among the women were three whose porn names were Hadley Viscara,
Sofi Ryan, and Shay Evans.
Derek has always denied any wrongdoing.
The customer's not coming till 12.
Great. The most serious stuff,
a lot of it is around the idea of inappropriate sexual relationships
between you and artists that you represented
in which they felt they were either required or coerced,
or, in a couple of cases, assaulted.
Shay Evans says that you said, "If you sleep with me,
"if you agree to a relationship, I will make you a star."
Well, I have to correct you on that -
I don't think Shay Evans has said that.
I've got the Shay Evans quote on my phone, if that would be...
Would that be helpful, if I gave you the exact quote?
I don't mind.
OK.
"Derek asked me if I wanted to come back to his hotel room.
"He asked me a few times, and then I agreed,
"and then in the car ride over there he kept telling me
"how I would get a lot of work and that he'd make me a star.
"When Shay refused..." This is the trip to Hawaii.
"..she alleged that all porn work began to dry up for her
"on her return home.
"Then she was given a shoot with Pierre Woodman as a punishment.
"Even though she rang Derek, crying hysterically before the shoot,
"he insisted she could not cancel."
Really?
No woman in the adult film industry
is coerced to do any particular shoot.
What's your position on the idea that...
..you sexually assaulted, erm,
a couple of your models?
I did have sex with one of those women on multiple occasions
cos we were dating, so...
Sofi Ryan? Correct.
Out of dozens of times that we were intimate,
the allegation is that one of those times was coercive.
Her version sounded dreadful, right?
I mean, it wasn't like, "Oh, it was ambiguous."
I mean, she describes it as, you pulled over in a car
where there was no phone coverage,
having kind of finagled her into the car,
and said, "If you don't give me a hand job,
"I'm going to leave you here to die."
Right.
But she was happy to...come and spend the night with me
just a couple of nights later?
Is there anything more you wanted to say about that?
No. I need to pause.
I've got to let this tattoo artist in. OK, do it.
Do you want to set up over here?
Right. What do you...? Give me one second.
Can you give me five minutes? Yeah. OK. Thanks.
Because it's one of the more serious allegations,
we should deal with Hadley Viscara's claim
that, you know, she was sexually assaulted by you. Mm-hm.
She says twice, on two occasions.
And, erm... On two occasions... One was... ..two days apart.
Four days apart. No.
We'll agree to disagree. All right.
One was a coerced blow job, I guess.
And the second was, I guess, a more full-on assault
in which she says she was very drunk.
Yeah, she made a police report on that seven months after the fact.
And Las Vegas police made some investigation on that
and then declined to...
..to pursue the case further.
What's your position on what happened?
Both of those occasions was entirely consensual, er...
..sex between us.
She's a lesbian.
She became a lesbian after the fact.
Since then - not at the time.
So she says.
So, I guess the crowning allegation is the idea
that you made introductions to an escort agency
and they began doing, I guess, illegal sex work as a result of that.
"Hay knowingly attempted to help procure employment
"for petitioners with The Luxury Companion,
"an escort service,
"and helped book employment for Viscara..."
PHONE RINGS
"..helped broker relationship with Sofi Ryan
"and Shay Evans so they could work as escorts." One sec.
Prestige Tattoo and Blade.
Oh, yeah, she's here.
No, no, you can come in.
Where are you? Please come in.
OK, please come in.
Please come in. Thank you.
Did you get the last bit?
Yeah.
I think I did, anyway. "Helped book employment for Viscara.
"Helped broker relationship with Sofi Ryan,
"Shay Evans, Andi Rye,
"so they could work as escorts."
Come in.
It would be good to get just some sort of a response.
OK, let me try one more time.
OK, I actually would prefer you not read that again... OK. ..now. OK?
OK. Did you get any sort of referral fee or finder's fee
or introduction fee
for steering your models to The Luxury Companion?
I didn't steer our models to The Luxury Companion
in the first place.
Got no referral fee
and no percentage of their earnings at all.
I feel like we've taken up a lot of your time. Are you OK?
Yes, I'm fine, thank you. Hm.
So, the big picture, I suppose,
is the feeling that artists
would enter relationships with you,
sexual relationships,
and...if you were unhappy with how they ended
or the way that they ended,
you'd intentionally destroy their careers.
That's the allegation that was made.
I contend that none of that is true.
Certainly,
the women have come up with a narrative
and script that is unbelievably similar.
In some cases, they are alleging near criminal conduct.
So, I look forward to our day, or days, in court in May of next year.
With all its interruptions,
it had ended up being a slightly frustrating interview,
and I wondered if it said something about Derek's personality,
a steely quality of control.
As it stands,
Derek is appealing the labour commission ruling that upheld
the sexual assault allegations against him.
He also awaits a criminal trial on charges related
to the escorting business, that could result in prison time.
Allez, mademoiselle,
these breasts look to be impressive.
We will see later.
One of the names that came up often in Derek's labour commission hearing
was Pierre Woodman.
Two of Derek's performers said
they'd expressed concerns about working with Pierre,
and a third, named Andi Rye, said afterwards that aspects of
the scene had not been consensual.
Wow, Serenity Haze.
How old are you, Serenity? 22.
Another performer who worked with Pierre in 2016,
in a deal brokered by Derek,
went by the porn name Serenity Haze,
which she has since changed.
Why you decide to come to porn?
I want to be in magazines and movies and stuff like that.
More like exhibitionism stuff?
Yeah.
In a way, a worst-case scenario for you is, well...
One of the cases where a woman accused you of rape
was Serenity Haze, right?
When was your first blow job?
Oh, in porn? Back in...
No, no, no, no, no, in your life, in your life.
In January, in porn.
No. I don't suck dick in real life.
Never? No. If I'm not getting paid for it, I'm not doing it.
You never have sucked anyone? No.
It comes across that, sex in general,
she gives the impression of not enjoying.
You let him cum in your mouth? No.
You like to try? No.
Why not? Because I said "no."
No, no.
During the scene, she just is visibly uncomfortable
and she's becoming increasingly annoyed.
It's burning.
No, no, don't do this, because it will not go in - this is lubricant.
It's burning. No, I'm not doing that.
Afterwards, Serenity Haze took to Twitter,
complaining that she hadn't been paid for her scene...
..and accusing Pierre of serious sexual assault.
In return, Pierre released this
behind-the-scenes footage of the incident.
What I saw was you attempting to negotiate with her.
Yes, because I...
And she experiences that as a kind of abuse, right?
I could see a case how that is a result of your working practices
colliding with her needs.
Does that make sense?
Does it make sense
if, in five minutes, I go to the internet and I write,
"Oh, my God, today Louis was here and I feel so bad now
"because he harassed me with his questions, coming back,
"coming back all the time that I'm a bad guy,
"I'm a rapist and everything.
"My God, now I have trouble
"and I need to go maybe for one week out of my world
"because my head is broken and I feel so bad now,
"all this crazy discussion,
"and this pressure he put on me, I don't know if I can..."?
Come on.
What will you think? You will smile.
If I speak just about money part,
I lost money, because I lost my morning or my afternoon of job.
Number two, if I said, "Oh, I send her back home,"
then she will write on the internet
that I am a motherfucker because I didn't give her the job.
I just tried to make this girl feel good.
She was a stupid idiot.
Things didn't go well.
I didn't push, I let her go home, and that's it.
Do you accept the characterisation of you
that you use high-pressure tactics?
Yes. He start again... HE LAUGHS
OK, what is a high-pressure tactic?
Tell me something concrete.
Well, you use the example of having sex
with a woman on camera,
and then during the sex act saying, "Why don't we do a DP?"
One in the front, one in the back.
The more accepted practice would be to decide all of that beforehand.
Why? Well, so that... Who says that?
..you're not moving the goalposts. Louis, who says that?
Well, all the performers that I've spoken to.
They say that before you start... No. Stop.
It's not in the middle of the sex, you don't say,
"Oh, you know what..." No. "..I'm going to cum inside you,
"even though that's not what you've agreed.
Stop. It's not true.
I am a guy who will discuss with the girl,
and decide with the girls.
I understand that you want absolutely to show me
like a bad person.
I don't know why, but it's probably a necessity for you.
It's easy to say bad things about everybody, you know.
So easy. I don't know you...
I can just, tomorrow or tonight when I will go home,
"Oh, today this British presenter came and,
"oh, I'm sure he's this or he's that."
Given everything that's going on, right... What do you mean?
MeToo, specifically.
There's more questions asked,
people demand more clarity about what is being agreed to.
Have you changed your practices?
Will you change your practices?
Do you want me to change something that I do since 30 years, works?
I consider that if a girl is 18 years old,
adult, and I speak to her,
she answer what she want to answer
and she do what she want to do.
I don't put a gun on her head to take my dick in the mouth,
in the ass or the pussy, she do whatever she want.
The encounter with Serenity Haze
and everything that went wrong with it,
encapsulated the issue with Pierre's working practices,
but it was also symptomatic of
a more pervasive tension in the adult industry -
a world where the questionable behaviours
that exist in all walks of life
coincide with a workplace involving extreme sex,
and where an unjustified stigma has meant that
the voices of its workers haven't always been heard.
Booty to me a little bit more.
I was back with Mia Malkova in her castle.
Right there, perfect, freeze.
Can you open the knees a little bit? Yeah.
Right there, right there, perfect.
SHUTTER CLICKS
It feels as though the industry is changing.
Yes, cos I just think back to when I came into the industry
and I was 19 and I didn't know a lot.
And I was just very eager to please and not make a fuss.
I've honestly been in situations
where the scenes have gotten more aggressive than I would like
but I'm still revved up, telling them, "Yes, more,"
and I think a big part of it is you're just eager to please
everybody on set,
and once the camera starts it's really, really hard.
You have to be brave to muster up that courage
to, like, say, "Stop, no - I don't think like that."
But now we have these large followings
so with that comes a lot of power.
It's hard to ignore us any more,
especially when everyone's saying the same thing.
It's just, er...
It's empowering.