Free The Madness of Joe Francis: "I thought we were all just having fun. I was wrong." by David Angier

Smoak that he had a statement from one of the 17-year-olds who had been filmed and he could see for himself how her life had been impacted. This girl would file her own lawsuit against Francis a year later, known as the “Plaintiff B” lawsuit.
    “At the young age of 17” the statement from a girl identified only as B.S. started, “I was manipulated and deceived and ultimately exposed sexually. To this day I am tormented by the event and have suffered from feelings of shame, guilt and even social anxiety.
    “Since the release of the video I have endured a tremendous amount of humiliation because of the way friends and family saw me portrayed. It was difficult for them to look at me the same way and it has taken years to restore those relationships – relationships that are special and dear to my heart.
    “Years have gone by, but the memories of being sexually exploited still surface and traumatize me.”
    Francis rocked from foot to foot and rolled his head from side to side as he stood behind his lawyers. He didn’t know what to do with his hands so he put them in his pockets, took them out, clasped them behind his back and put them back in his pockets.
    Smoak asked who ran Mantra Films. Dyer said Francis was the CEO, Scott Barbour was the president, Eric Deutsch was vice president.
    Smoak then turned his attention to Francis.
    “Mr. Francis, did you read the victim impact statements?”
    “Yeah, I did. I read some of them.”
    “Mr. Francis, I want you to step up to the podium. I want to make sure you’ve read this,” Smoak said, holding B.S.’s statement. “I want you to read it out loud.”
    Francis hesitated.
    “I just want you to know that my policy has always been, and will always be, not to use girls under the age of 18 in any of our videos,” he told Smoak. “Because these girls lied about their age, they were able to get in our videos and that’s what happened here.”
    “You know that might happen, don’t you?” Smoak asked.
    “I never would have dreamed this would have happened with all the things we had in place to prevent this from happening.”
    Smoak asked him if he’d read a study that was released within the last year that indicated the human brain isn’t fully developed until a person’s mid-twenties.
    “Doesn’t take a real brave man to go out and corner some young female who has had four or five beers in the middle of Spring Break and convince them to do something dumb,” Smoak growled. “Now read the statement, please, so we make sure that you have read it and presumably understand it.”
    “We go to war at 18 years old, your honor,” Francis said in a quiet, unconvincing voice.
    “Mr. Francis read the statement,” Smoak said, his voice remaining even.
    “I don’t think those kids are dumb,” Francis mumbled.
    “Read the statement,” Smoak roared.
    Francis read it.
    Smoak then set out the details of the sentence. He went through every aspect meticulously.
    He questioned the size of the fine, saying $1.6 million represented just 3.5-percent of the company’s profit since 2002.
    “Now, I am concerned whether the fine alone as provided in the plea agreement adequately carries out the stated requirements of sentencing,” Smoak said.
    Dyer asked him to defer to the wisdom of the government in coming to that amount.
    “They have conducted an intensive investigation and came to the conclusion that this is the fair result in this case,” he said.
    Dyer asked the judge to take into account that Girls Gone Wild was in its “fledgling” stage when the offenses occurred.
    “Three of them were actually filmed at a time when they were just developing their filming techniques, their policies,” Dyer said. Since then, he said, the company had ramped up its efforts to comply with the law.
    Smoak imposed the fine, but then went a step farther. He ordered Francis and the three highest officers in his corporations to do eight hours a month of community service work in Bay