Afflicting the afflicted

Claire Hoffman's LA Times article on Joe Francis reveals the Girls Gone Wild entrepeneur to be a raging id. This is unlikely to come as a great surprise to anybody who knows much about who he is and what it is that he sells. It also, however, reveals a lot about the morals of US journalists.

The article is certainly less than flattering to Francis, who could certainly be arrested for the things he did to the LA Times reporter alone. (Indeed, one police officer advises her in the article to press charges against him.) At the same time, however, Hoffman herself is more than a little bit exploitative – of exactly the same girls who have already been exploited by Francis.

In the article, Hoffman talks both to Francis and to the girls who get naked for his videos in return for little more than a free t-shirt. Why do they do it? 21-year-old Jillian Vangeertry talks about her "15 minutes of fame". Kaitlyn Bultema is more explicit about her motives:

"Most guys want to have sex with me and maybe I could meet one new guy, but if I get filmed everyone could see me," Bultema says. "If you do this, you might get noticed by somebody—to be an actress or a model."
I ask her why she wants to get noticed. "You want people to say, 'Hey, I saw you.' Everybody wants to be famous in some way. Getting famous will get me anything I want. If I walk into somebody's house and said, 'Give me this,' I could have it."

We read this, and we are saddened by the delusions and naïveté of these girls. No one is likely to become an actress or a model through appearing on a Girls Gone Wild video. If people do see you in the video, they're likely to label you as a slut long before they will give you "anything you want". Later on in life, when you're working at your job, your subordinates or your superiors might find video footage of you and a couple of other girls having sex on camera. This will not be good for your career. And yet given the enormous potential downside and the nonexistent potential upside, girls still flock in their thousands to be feature in GGW videos.

Hoffman then tells the harrowing story of Jannel Szyszka, described as "a petite 18-year-old". Acccording to her acccount, she was plied with alcohol before she got naked for the GGW video cameras, masturbated with a dildo, and told the cameraman that she was a virgin. Then Francis himself takes over.

Afterward, she says, Francis cleaned them both off with a paper towel and told her to get dressed. Then, she says, he opened the door and told the cameraman to come back, saying, "She's not a virgin anymore."

At the end of the night, Szyszka has three pairs of underwear, and at best unpleasant memories of something which might well have been rape. Six weeks later, however, things go from bad to worse: she agrees to talk, on the record, to Claire Hoffman. Until that point, her downside to appearing in a GGW video was confined to what might happen if someone she knew saw the video – something which might well never occur.

Now, from here on in, anybody googling her (she has a pretty unique name) will see first and foremost that she was the girl seduced / taken advantage of / raped by Joe Francis. It's something which will follow her for the rest of her life, long after her episode of Girls Gone Wild has stopped being watched by anyone.

Hoffman didn't need to use Szyszka's real name, and certainly didn't need to use her surname, but doing so gives her (Hoffman) added brownie points at the LA Times. After all, getting people on the record is always preferable to granting them anonymity.

We don't know how Hoffman ended up talking to Szyszka. We know that Szyszka first "came out" about her experience to her family a month after the events took place, and that she seems to have first spoken to Hoffman between that point and the point a couple of weeks later when Hoffman confronted Francis about what happened. Who approached whom is unknown. But even if Szyszka approached Hoffman, I think that a responsible journalist would have taken it upon herself to shield this vulnerable young woman from this kind of posterity.

As it is, Szyszka ends up as not only a notch on Francis's belt, but a notch on Hoffman's as well. Yet Hoffman comes out with nothing but accolades for her story. She exposed Joe Francis as an exploiter of young and innocent girls; has it occurred to her that she could be described the same way?

Posted by Felix at 23:25 EST

Comments

We don't know enough about the unfortunate Ms. Szyszka's backstory. It is quite possible, knowing how litigious Francis is, that the LA Times would not have been able to discuss the incident without attributing it, and that they explained to her their dilemma. She may have felt that it was worth it to publicise the incident, even if she was unable to bring criminal charges. It might even help in a civil case, although I'm now speculating wildly.

Posted by: Gari N. Corp at 16:27 EST, August 09, 2006

Why is it so bad that her name is published? Isn't the point that the young girl should not feel shame, but that Francis should feel shame? If I were interviewing this girl for a job and I found this article, I would not judge her for it. In fact, I would see her as a survivor with an incredible amount of courage to tell this story, especially to a LA Times reporter.

Posted by: Sharon Brock at 10:40 EST, August 16, 2006

Why is it so bad that her name is published? Isn't the point that the young girl should not feel shame, but that Francis should feel shame? If I were interviewing this girl for a job and I found this article, I would not judge her for it. In fact, I would see her as a survivor with an incredible amount of courage to tell this story, especially to a LA Times reporter.

Posted by: Sharon Brock at 10:41 EST, August 16, 2006

Why is it so bad that her name is published? Isn't the point that the young girl should not feel shame, but that Francis should feel shame? If I were interviewing this girl for a job and I found this article, I would not judge her for it. In fact, I would see her as a survivor with an incredible amount of courage to tell this story, especially to a LA Times reporter.

Posted by: Sharon Brock at 10:44 EST, August 16, 2006

US Government is highly assenine in regards to protecting the meek/stupid/impressionable sector of the population. It requires liscence for driving as a means of avoiding harm. It would be wise to start issuing liscences that allow such actions to not be so mindless, irresponsible, reckless, questionable.

This is sheer exploitation that can be coppied by the likes of Hustler "onsite" or Pornoking "onsite".

It is tragic deplorable, and the US GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO A BETTER JOB IN PROTECTING ITS POPULATION FROM HARM. Just like it forces people to wear seat belts, it needs toughen its stance against an area where this over glorified jerkoff can be mimiced by every other porn peddler doing a "live" version of the show. Instead of doing a porn via hired actresses, it gets mindless teens tanked and commits such horrid crimes that OUGHT TO BE PROTECTED BETTER AGAINST BY THE US GOVERNMENT AND ITS MINDLESS IRRESPONSIBILITY TO ITS OWN POPULACE.

Posted by: james at 3:07 EST, January 23, 2007

I found this post by Googling one of the names of the young women in Claire Hoffman's article. So does that make you an exploiter of young and innocent girls too?

Posted by: Tyrone Slothrop at 8:25 EST, April 11, 2007

Afflicting the afflicted

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