Help needed for a friend's friend!

[NeilUK]

Hi ,

A friend of mine has emailed me asking if I can help and its abit off my area of expertise. I have copied and pasted her email here. Please, any help is appreciated, you can see from the email to me how worried my friend is.

"Hi neil,

just wondering if you can help me with something, i have a friend who ive known for years and she has often mentioned she wanted to do glamour modelling. well last year she got a modelling assignment, but the guy persuaded her to do more than stills and ended up doing a lingerie video. only problem the guy never paid her and has sold it all to a company who are distributing it. the guy wont listen to her and is reluctant to do anything about it cos hes making money. even more serious is the fact that she is under 18 years of age! the guy selling it has no id for her and cannot prove her age, and also doesnt seem to care. ive been told you can make a report of underage material being sold but who do you make the report to? im so worried about her! shes only just turned 17 and this was done when she was 16, she said she didnt even want to do it and felt pressured into doing it. unfort theres alot of people like this about, as ive also learnt this but i hope i can help her in some way! "

Thanks, hope you can help. I am not too sure but I don't think the age is a problem, law wise if its just a lingerie video but is there anything she can do?

Neil

[Jayr]

Well with the changes in the law you could always threaten them. As I understand it, it is illegal to take pictures or film of an "adult" nature of persons under the age of 18, plus if you can prove that it was done against their will then it's even better. The person selling the video/images can be threatened with being a pedophille. That's just the way I believe the new law works but I might be wrong, but it should give you a good start!

[ptolomy]

I would suggest she should report the matter to her local police station. Although over the age of consent( for sexual intercourse) she is not old enough to give her consent for the video to be shot. Although it is not a child concern case i would imagine that her local child protection unit would have an interest in the matter. All this however is dependent on her wishing to make a formal complaint, otherwise then im afraid there is very little she could do save pursue the payment sid e through a civil court.

[paul jones]

She could go to the News of the World, or tell them she's going to at least

It sounds like the sort of thing they'd love to print.

Scare the **** out of them. Maybe even get paid, by them or the News.

[Number1]

I have in the past offered the services of myself and my fellow doormen in matters similar to this, but people will only get personally involved in matters like this if they know one of the parties in person. There is always another side to the story, so the agenda often changes during the course of any intervention.

Having said that, here is my advice.

There's a few things strike me about this one. If he's sold the film to a distributor, then he's not "making" money, he's made it lump sum. And presumably the distributors are abroad, and will no doubt have fake ID records to go with it, either bought in good faith, or with their knowledge. Hard to say without knowing the distributor

Can she prove he shot the video? Legally she cannot sign any contract, so any release must be signed by her parents/guardians, but unless he's caught red handed with the original footage, or it is shot in his home perhaps, no conviction will be forthcoming.

First thing to do in my opinion would be to see who else uses the same distributor, and see if any of them have any real clout with them, and ask them as a favour to withdraw it from sale. Second thing would be to pay him a visit and ask for compensation for the girl's ordeal, which I'm sure he'd be willing to pay.

In my opinion any news coverage would turn a fairly unknown piece of footage into a highly lucrative piece of contraband, and not to the model's benefit. For smutty videos, any publicity is good publicity. And unless some celebrity is involved don't expect huge payments (if any) from newspapers for a story like this