Underage Model now facing harassment

Guys, I need some help and advice.

I do represent Brent Corrigan for the purpose of disclosing the videos he appeared in underage that were produced and distributed by Cobra Video. That is pretty well known, and we have been successful in getting those titles removed from the market. I am not defending the model's actions but working on putting things right.

Since the story went public, someone has been busy putting profiles online that include his images, his stage name, his real name, and his location. After we successfully got one of the profiles taken down, the mysterious poster sent an image of a photo ID to the personals site so the site put the profile back up. Whoever is doing this has access to the photo ID's that the model gave to Cobra Video. I cannot think of anyone other than the owner of Cobra Video that would (1) have anything to gain by putting up personal information from the model AND (2) has access to the ID's given to Cobra Video.

One of the great fears of the 2257 laws is that model's information will be made public opening them up to stalkers. It appears to me that someone is doing exactly that to Brent Corrigan.

I have already made a report to the Pennsylvania FBI and am waiting for a detective to return my call from local police. The personals and hook up sites are helpful at first , but when the poster sends them a copy of the ID the profile goes back up. Whoever is doing this has a serious axe to grind.

Whoever is doing this is a piece of shit; nobody should have their personal information posted without their permission.

Any suggestions on how else to deal with this?

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Originally Posted by chadknowslaw

I cannot think of anyone other than the owner of Cobra Video that would (1) have anything to gain by putting up personal information from the model AND (2) has access to the ID's given to Cobra Video.

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Damn Chad, that sucks although i can think of at least 1 other person who would have something to gain and who would have access to those ID's given to Cobra.

Regards,

Lee

Who is that?

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Originally Posted by Lee

Damn Chad, that sucks although i can think of at least 1 other person who would have something to gain and who would have access to those ID's given to Cobra.

Regards,

Lee

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I read this as, and not pointing fingers or blame, the underaged actor - reason: to make his case seem stronger.

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Originally Posted by chadknowslaw

Who is that?

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Uhm, the little shithead model perhaps? Granted, he's shown himself to be such an ethical person to begin with, so to even suggest that he might be behind his own harassment is probably just silly talk, right?

As an attorney, one would think you'd know better than to come online and start pointing your fingers at people like Cobra by name.

This little asshole client of yours has probably cost a LOT of people a LOT of money above and beyond just the people at Cobra Video. If he's not responsible for the profiles himself, I'd think the list of potential suspects is probably pretty large at this point.

If he thinks that anyone in this industry is going to feel the slightest amount of pitty or compassion for him, I think he's going to find himself sadly mistaken. If those of us in this industry had our way, what your client did by lying about his age to get into videos would be a felony, and his corrupt little ass would be sitting in prison right now, instead of having his attorney make posts on industry boards to find out "who's picking on him".

:boo:

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Originally Posted by chadknowslaw

Who is that?

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Your client ;)

Regards,

Lee

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Originally Posted by Lee

Your client ;)

Regards,

Lee

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It isn't my client.

I asked the question to see if you would answer the way I thought you would.


I am not looking for sympathy for or from anyone. I want to make the harassment stop. If my client has committed a crime, then it is up to the state to punish him. If a producer has committed a crime, then it is up to the state to punish him.

An old judge I once practiced with put it very eloquently. Life is like a rugby game. If everybody plays by the rules, you all have a good game. If someone breaks the rules, there are rules and procedures to deal with rule breakers. If the referee blows the whistle, the rule breaker might get a warning, he might get put in the penalty box, or he might be taken out of the game. It is not up to the other players to penalize the rule breaking player--it is up to the officials. If the other players exacted their own penalty on the rule breaking player, then THEY would be breaking the rules and need to be put in the penalty box.

It is up to me to make sure the officials have as much information as possible so they can make a good call. While the truth is percolating to the surface, I can take a little heat.

I don't understand here why everyone is so quick to blame the model and assume that Chad is being naive about things. (Well, one exception: Lee I can understand -- it fits the rest of his charming and professional demeanor as demonstrated by his moderation of this board.) But the rest of the people here... Chad is a professional, he's been a prosecutor... I think we can assume that he'd have his guard up to being "played" by his client.

Take a look at the facts. No question that Brent was a total and complete turd in faking his docs and causing amazing problems (and money loss) for Cobra, and I'm sure that, in time, it will come back to him. No apologies here for that behavior, it's inexcusable.

But Cobra has done absolutely nothing to try and make things right, either... even after they knew about the underage content, they took no action to stop distribution of it, they've made no public statements, and given no indication of *any* desire to do the right thing. What they have done is to go after Juicygoo's owners and webmaster with unfounded and bogus legal threats, make all sorts of claims about Brent in various public forums, and so if one looks at the rest of their behavior, it seems very plausible that the fake profiles could be coming from or at the direction of Cobra.

I agree that we as an industry need to work together and support each other... but we also realize there are occasional "bad apples" in the bunch that don't conduct business in a professional, upstanding manner. Cobra's done nothing publically to indicate it can act professionally, and lots to indicate that it cannot.

It seems to me that Chad and Brent are a little more deserving of our support here.

As far as practical suggestions for Chad, I'd suggest that if any of us run across profiles of Brent on any M4M, personals, cruising, or escorting websites, we screencap them, along with the URL or profile ID info, and email to Chad.

Perhaps if Chad then posts a list of all of the offending sites here at GWW, the site owners (rather than the front line customer service people) can be notified to take appropriate action.

I would not want to post the names of sites that have profiles posted. The profile sites are being used for an improper purpose but that is not their fault--and so far they have been mostly cooperative. Any notification of a profile being posted is helpful, however, and you can notify me directly instead of posting publically.

It's clearly obvious to me Cobra's up to no good.

I understand people want to give a producer the benefit of the doubt. In situations like this producers want to circle the wagons and blame whomever needs blaming to ensure we're not at fault or at risk. Blaming the model serves that purpose.

But people are blinding themselves to the reality of this particular situation by so eagerly assuming the producer is the victim here and it's all fault of the model.

In the case of a model first applying to Cobra video and being underage, then sure that model did a shitty thing. And producers should be protected from models who attempt to deceive about their age.

But when it comes to...
- Subsequent and severe harrassment of the model
- Trying to coverup the fact that one of their models was underage
- Sending out bogus legal threats to other producers, webmasters
- Sticking it to their distributor to deal with all of this
Cobra's to blame on that front.

when i was 15, i left home. i wasn't legal, so when i had a situation where my over-18 friends might get in trouble, i took off to keep them from ending up with some horrible charges.

cobra might have been up to no good - they surely haven't handled the situation very well - but the model was more than old enough to understand the possible consequences to others of what he was doing. 17 is old enough to be responsible for your actions, even if the law doesn't always agree.

Err - Wrong Thread!

( Wonders whether he has an appropriate wav file for this thread in library )

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Originally Posted by desslock

( Wonders whether he has an appropriate wav file for this thread in library )

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Perhaps something like this?

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Originally Posted by boyfunk

But Cobra has done absolutely nothing to try and make things right, either... even after they knew about the underage content, they took no action to stop distribution of it, they've made no public statements, and given no indication of *any* desire to do the right thing. What they have done is to go after Juicygoo's owners and webmaster with unfounded and bogus legal threats, make all sorts of claims about Brent in various public forums, and so if one looks at the rest of their behavior, it seems very plausible that the fake profiles could be coming from or at the direction of Cobra.

I agree that we as an industry need to work together and support each other... but we also realize there are occasional "bad apples" in the bunch that don't conduct business in a professional, upstanding manner. Cobra's done nothing publically to indicate it can act professionally, and lots to indicate that it cannot.

It seems to me that Chad and Brent are a little more deserving of our support here.

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Not to mention the bad blood that Cobra is generating for itself among stores, websites, other distributors and customers. Being silent is the wrong thing to do. They should be reaching out to appease their marketing chain and distribution channels if they have nothing to hide. After all, it is the lifeblood of any video line to have distribution and retail sales outlets.

We have been stuck with 10 videos that we had to seal in a box for "attorney review" without knowing which attorney, how to get it to any attorney, for a sum of over $300 paid for these products. We have had one customer who sent back 3 more of cobra's videos in this series claiming we sold him child porn and threatening to sue us for that.....an issue that has been resolved with a little bit of education and information to the customer, but none the less a grey stain in the mind of the customer about our business ethics.... AND our distributor on this "Pacific Sun" is refusing to take the videos back (even defaced so they can't be viewed) or issue any credits for them.

If the studio wanted to do the right thing it would be to issue credits for the videos they have sold through their distributor, and have the distributor destroy all videos left in their warehouse and refund those already paid for to the distributor and stores.

But alas, none of this has happened, and now we have a sour taste in our mouths for Cobra videos.

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Originally Posted by tombarr

We have been stuck with 10 videos that we had to seal in a box for "attorney review" without knowing which attorney, how to get it to any attorney, for a sum of over $300 paid for these products.

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I've talked to a bunch of people in the same bind... some have dozens of copies. I would bet Pacific Sun (who is obviously stuck with product it can't return to Cobra) probably had hundreds, maybe thousands of copies.

At the *very* least, Cobra could issue a statement saying something like "We're very concerned about our loyal retailers and want to assure you that we'll do everything to make things right, we just need a little time to work things out." But instead, they're being completely silent.

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AND our distributor on this "Pacific Sun" is refusing to take the videos back (even defaced so they can't be viewed) or issue any credits for them.

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My understanding is that no one can legally ship the videos, even defaced. I am guessing that Pacific Sun is trying to ensure that it can get credit (or something) from Cobra before figuring out what to do... but if Cobra is being silent, who knows? I'm guessing we'll hear something from somebody (Cobra or Pacific Sun) before too long... that's providing that Cobra's owners are still even in the country.

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But alas, none of this has happened, and now we have a sour taste in our mouths for Cobra videos.

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My point exactly. Brent's actions are inexcusable, but Cobra's silence is, in my book, even worse, given that Cobra is not operated by an 18 year old with little real-world experience.

This certainly isn't the first time an underage performer has been exposed; there was an incident a week before the Cobra one came to light, there have been others in the past couple of years. If a studio takes its knocks and recalls the product, it still stucks but few blame them for being the recipients of fake IDs. But in this case, it's hard for me, at least, to have much sympathy for Cobra.

So Cobra hasn't had time to issue a statement but they've found plenty of time to run about harrassing the model in question, along with others?

They haven't even taken the dude's pictures off their website.

o.O