Back for Seconds: The Key Word is “Barely,” Not “Legal”

It’s not a particularly new opinion that Bonnie Blue’s penchant for targeting “barely legal” teenagers to be her scene partners in adult content is problematic and predatory, however I don't think the potential severity of the situation has been fully understood.

I’m going to explain a recent civil and criminal case from America that reached sentencing in 2024, involving coercion, sex trafficking and sexual assault, that I believe bears some similarities to the content that Bonnie Blue produces, and is an extreme example of the potential harm that the “barely legal” subgenre of pornography can cause. I am in no way accusing Bonnie Blue of a criminal offense, nor am I trying to say that she is just as bad as Michael Pratt and his co-conspirators, however both cases should be judged as harmful toward young people involved, as these examples are rife with power imbalances and exploitation, which can be said for most, if not all pornographic content labelled “barely legal.”

The Crimes and Lies of Michael Pratt, Matthew Wolfe and Andre Garcia

In 2006, Michael Pratt founded the website “GirlsDoPorn” (GDP) with childhood friend Matthew Wolfe after the pair spent the early 2000s founding several pornographic websites that directed traffic to other sites, with Pratt and Wolfe earning a small commission for each clickthrough. One of these sites inspired Pratt to work on GDP, which he launched in 2009 described as “a reality website that features 18-21 year old females making their very first adult video.” The site would become wildly profitable, and its success would only increase as time went on, particularly after Pratt and Wolfe relocated to America to find talent for their site. 

The company developed a formula, founded on deceit and coercion from the beginning. The company would place ads for modelling jobs on Craigslist and other job sites, never once indicating the jobs involved nudity or pornography. The following account contains details provided by a woman known as Jane Doe #15, who responded to one of these adverts. 

She received a response from “Johnathan N” (later revealed to be a pseudonym used by Pratt or Wolfe) who was using what appeared to be a legit modelling agency email address, still no indication that the job involved pornography, or that the individuals involved were terrible people. 

Johnathan N offered Jane Doe $4000 for a regular modelling shoot, and then offered her an additional $1000 for a solo pornographic video shoot. Despite Jane Doe declining the offer, Jonathan persisted, eventually offering her $5000 to film a sex scene, which she agreed to. 

“He said it would be 30 minutes of filming sex. He said it would be $5000… He repeatedly said ‘not online, not online, not in the US.’ That it would be on DVDs to Australia, the UK…Then I asked if I could just do regular modelling and he said no, it had to be both.”

That quote is an excerpt from a sworn statement from Jane Doe #15 on her experience with the company. I find this whole sequence of events very important to detail as it will come apparent that the men running GDP were being dishonest from the beginning, and would break every single promise Jane Doe recounted in her statement, and every promise made to every single woman victimized by this scheme. 

Jonathan additionally put Jane Doe #15 in touch with a woman who claimed to have filmed with the company before, and that none of the content she filmed was published onto the internet, only distributed on DVDs in countries outside the USA, reinforcing what Johnathan had claimed to Jane Doe, and convincing her to participate in the pornographic shoot. This woman was later revealed to be hired by Pratt and Wolfe to convince prospective models to agree to the shoots, despite having never filmed for the company before. 

Jane Doe #15’s experience shooting the scene in San Diego was nothing short of horrific. In February of 2016, Jane Doe travelled from Colorado to California, with her return flight scheduled by the company for later that night. The shoot occurred in a hotel, and Jane had reason to believe that the company didn’t have the necessary permits to shoot pornography in the hotel (most of the camera equipment being snuck into the hotel in luggage, and when asked by another patron of the hotel why they were there, an employee of the company claimed to be filming a wedding.)

Jane was rushed through signing a stack of consent and release forms by her scene partner, Andre Garcia, who frequently filmed for GDP. While Jane was signing the forms she was offered a joint by Garcia, which was a frequent occurrence during shoots for the company- drug and alcohol use was encouraged by the men involved in the shoot, typically while the women were signing their contracts, which never included the name “GirlsDoPorn” despite that site being the primary location where this footage was published. While she was signing her contracts (which she never received a copy of) Jane Doe was informed that the shoot would take longer than the 30 minutes that were promised.

30 minutes turned into several hours of rough treatment and sex acts that Jane Doe was uncomfortable with and asked not to do. In response to her objections, Teddy Gyi (the camera operator, hired by Pratt and Wolfe) and Garcia refused to let Jane Doe stop the shoot, threatening to not pay her if she backed out. 

In the end, Jane Doe was only paid $3000, just over half of what she was promised for a painless 30 minute shoot. This pay reduction was blamed on the “executives” of the company, who claimed that Jane Doe was “bruised up” in the footage and, and Johnathan would later tell Jane “My partner and I were not impressed with the photos.”

Not only was Jane Doe lied to about the nature of the shoot and how much she’d be paid, she was additionally lied to about where her footage would go. About a month after the shoot, the footage was uploaded to a site Jane Doe had never heard of- GirlsDoPorn. 

The footage being posted to the internet caused irreparable damage to Jane Doe’s reputation, social life and mental health, causing her to suffer from panic attacks and begin seeing a therapist after being relentlessly harassed and doxxed online, broken up with by her boyfriend, and kicked off her school’s cheerleading team. When attempting to reach out to the people who recruited or filmed with her, Jane Doe #15 received no response.

This formula was repeated with several young women, who were lied to about the distribution of their videos, and weren’t paid the agreed amount, and were threatened to perform in a myriad of ways. Luggage cases were often stacked against the doors to the hotel room, blocking the women from leaving. Women were additionally coerced into finishing the shoot under threat of not being paid at all, or having their accommodation/transport home cancelled, potentially leaving them stranded in an unfamiliar place, unable to travel home. 

Professionalism and safety was the furthest thing from the minds of the men involved in the scheme, as dozens of women recalled being propositioned and even sexually assaulted by Andre Garcia outside of filming, with several of these women reporting getting STDs from Garcia. Any requests from these women to have their videos removed was either ignored or met with mockery and threats of legal action from the GDP executives. 

In June of 2016, four women filed a lawsuit against the site, claiming that the owners had misrepresented themselves and made numerous false statements while getting the women to perform in pornographic videos. The women got connected with one another through the same methods used to shame them, which included a site owned by the same men as GDP, a site referred to as “Porn Wikileaks” which contained real names and identifying information about the women featured in GDP content. The lawsuit used a California contract law (since all of the videos were filmed in that state) as in that state, the validity of a contract is nullified if it was signed under false pretences. 

Michael Pratt, Matthew Wolfe, and Andre Garcia were the three primary defendants in the case (although other employees for the company would be involved here, and in the later criminal trial.) Dozens more women would join the lawsuit in the following years, which would face several delays from the defendants, such as Michael Pratt declaring bankruptcy and attempting to move the case to a separate court. The lawsuit was a highly complicated matter due to the dozens of shell companies set up to conceal the ownership of GirlsDoPorn and its connection to other websites and companies (such as those benign looking modelling agencies) The case eventually went to trial in August of 2019, and would continue until that November.

In November of 2019, Judge Kevin A. Enright ruled in the plaintiff’s favour, ordering that the defendants pay the plaintiffs over $12 million in damages. Judge Enright additionally gave each plaintiff ownership over any footage she appeared in, allowing the women to take control of their footage and choose what to do with it. 

As the lawsuit wrapped up in 2019, Pratt, Wolfe and Garcia were each charged with a count of sex trafficking by coercion, along with a charge of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. Both of these charges carried hefty fines and lengthy prison terms if found guilty (15 years minimum, maximum penalty of a life sentence, and $250,000 in fines.) Wolfe and Garcia were arrested immediately and held in custody, being deemed flight risks, which proved to be a good call as Michael Pratt’s whereabouts had been unknown for several years, before the case wrapped up in the early 2020s

• In late 2022, Michael Pratt became the first person on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted to be arrested in Spain. That same year, Theodore (Teddy) Gyi was sentenced to 4 years in prison. 

• In June of 2021, Andre Garcia (who’s legal given name is Ruben) was sentenced to 20 years in prison

• In March of 2024, Matthew Wolfe was sentenced to 14 years, not long after Michael Pratt had his first court appearance since being arrested. It is unknown what his fate will be at this time.

Several victims of the scheme stated during Wolfe’s sentencing that they are still feeling the ramifications of what was done to them, highlighting the irreparable damage caused by Wolfe and his co-conspirators. 

“He stole hundreds of lives.” 

“It’s been nearly 3650 days of living in a torturous purgatory…”

I first heard about this case in early 2021, when I was in high school, and it's always stuck with me. The fact that it has taken so long to get some form of justice is truly terrifying, especially considering Michael Pratt has yet to enter a plea or be sentenced for his role as the architect of so many women’s trauma. 

This case is an example of the adult film industry at its most predatory, so predatory and criminal in fact that many renounce this site as a part of the industry and call it a purely criminal enterprise. I’m inclined to agree with that statement regarding the owners of the site, however the site’s popularity shows a clear demand for this type of content, further normalizes the targeting of young people for pornography, and putting those young people at risk of harm through the production of this content.

Where Does Bonnie Blue Fit Into All This?

This type of content exists on a spectrum. On one end you have fully aware consenting adults with no power imbalance present, everyone involved knows what they are getting into and probably has a fully developed frontal lobe. On the other end you have what Michael Pratt and his co-conspirators did, a clear abuse of power and disregard for consent. Towards the center, but closer to the harmful side, you have Bonnie Blue and other content creators who target 18 year olds and obtain dubious consent, primarily for financial gain, without taking joy from the suffering of others in the way Pratt and his “colleagues” seemed to. Basically, both are problematic, but one is pure evil.

Blue was a guest on the podcast Saving Grace recently, where she detailed to the host how her content with “barely legal” men is produced. Most of these take place at events for those who are celebrating the end of high school or the beginning of university, which typically means high quantities of alcohol (and potentially other substances) and underage people either using fake IDs or just hanging around.

Blue’s practices involve checking and photographing her scene partners with their IDs, however she doesn't detail any way of checking that those IDs are real. Additionally, the way Blue herself speaks about these young men while they nervously sign their consent forms calls into question the validity of the consent being given, laughing about them “shaking” and comparing their body language to that of someone being held against their will. Blue additionally speaks at length about what it's like having sex with someone for their first time, specifically mentioning that “they don’t know what to expect.” 

In a podcast full of cooked soundbites and problematic quotes, that one really stuck out to me, as it sounded like a blatant disregard for the current understanding of consent, which can differ from location to location however typically requires the parties involved to be fully aware of what they are getting into. Blue’s bragging about being several people’s first sexual partner additionally emphasizes a pre existing issue, the power imbalance between her and her partners, as she is a famous content creator, not to mention the potential for peer pressure to influence someone’s decision at an event like this (raise your hand if you've ever done something because your mates egged you on, that you probably wouldn’t do if they weren’t around) 

Blue doesn’t go into much detail about the financial side of her “barely legal” content, only ever mentioning that her scene partners get to have sex with her for free, implying that they aren’t paid for their work in the scene (I thought we were done with paying people in “experience”) despite Blue claiming to earn over £500,000 per month. Instead, they are not charged for having sex with her, in exchange for allowing the sex to be filmed and posted online. Blue additionally says nothing about who owns the copyright of the content published, meaning it is unclear what avenues these young men have if they decide that they no longer want that content on the internet. 

Here’s a fact about the human brain that I think is important to know going forward. The frontal lobe/prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for judgment, decision making, inhibition and emotional regulation, is not fully developed until around the age of 25. 

The existence of “barely legal” as a genre of porn at all is something that shouldn’t be as normalized and accepted as it is. This content is designed to cater to those who are sexually attracted to minors but hide behind a so-called barrier of legality because the performers in the content they watch are over the age of consent. That statement also applies to the fetishization of childlike aesthetics (think of a sexy schoolgirl Halloween costume, how many teen drama TV shows include pretty explicit sex scenes because the cast are legal adults, how many vile misogynists preach on social media about how important it is to date younger women.) 

Both within the adult film industry and outside of it, taking advantage of children and teenagers is becoming more and more normalized and in higher and higher demand. The immense boom in popularity of sites like “GirlsDoPorn” is an example of this, Bonnie Blue bragging about her fans queuing for hours to nervously have sex with her is an example of this, and the more that incel language such as “sexual marketplace value” is used online and in person, the less safety children and teenagers have in a rapidly changing world. 

“Barely legal” content makes it easier for predators to get gratification from young people without knowingly breaking the law (I can guarantee you there is at least one kid using a fake ID at Schoolies this year) and additionally normalizes this type of harmful behaviour. Full grown adults have a duty to look after young people, not prey on them when they're in a vulnerable state. Individuals like Michael Pratt and Bonnie Blue have done the exact opposite, taking advantage of young people for financial gain without considering the potential damage being done, or their responsibility as a mature adult.