France is bringing more than a dozen men from the pornography industry to trial for their violent treatment of women and human trafficking.
Seventeen men involved in making violent pornographic films have been ordered to stand trial for a variety of crimes, including rape, gang rape, and aggravated pimping, the AFP reports.
The charges are all related to filming for the French pornography platform French Bukkake, a site run by Pascal Ollitrault. Four of the accused are already in prison. The seventeen defendants include approximately ten pornography actors, a top manager with the platform, his associate, and a recruiter.
The term ‘Bukkake’ means ‘splashing’ in Japanese, but in pornography, it refers to several men ejaculating on one person.
According to the AFP, the decision to take the case to trial comes almost a year after French police undertook a wider investigation into violence and human trafficking in the country’s pornography industry that resulted in several arrests.
The women told investigators that they had not been told, before going on set, about the type of sexual acts that actually took place and that they were subjected to violent acts without warning.
“Sexual acts were performed on them without warning, without them being able to comprehend them, and therefore without being able to give their consent,” the investigation document seen by AFP said.
“We were tortured,” one of the women told AFP. “I need the barbarity and the sexist and racist hatred that I was the victim of to be recognised and punished so I can live again.”
The women were also extorted, according to prosecutors. They were told that the film would only appear on a private Canadian website, but it was widely available in France. The women had to pay producers large sums of money to have the content removed from French platforms, but, in fact, even after the women paid, the films continued to circulate online.
