Originally published at BuzzFeed News
By Brianna Sacks
Lured to San Diego by online ads seeking models for photo shoots, nearly two dozen women say they were pressured to sign dense contracts in hotel rooms where they were given drugs and alcohol and pushed into doing porn. A short time later, that footage was posted on GirlsDoPorn.com and other popular websites, where many of the women said viewers found and published their full names online, resulting in severe harassment.
Now, after a years-long legal battle, a California judge on Thursday not only ordered Girls Do Porn to pay the 22 women $12.7 million in damages, but took a rare — and potentially game-changing — step of granting them ownership rights to the content.
“It’s an extraordinarily unique and incredibly valuable decision,” Ben Bull, vice president and general counsel at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, told BuzzFeed News. “It will blaze a trail for other law firms and victims to come behind them and essentially do the same thing.”
