For well over a decade, Michael James Pratt tried to avoid most of the hundreds of women whom he tricked and coerced into filming his GirlsDoPorn videos in San Diego hotel rooms. When frantic women begged him over the years to take the videos offline, he ignored their pleas. And in the midst of a 2019 civil trial in San Diego Superior Court, he fled the country.
But on Monday, 38 of Pratt’s victims finally had the chance to confront him as U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino sentenced him to 27 years in federal prison on one charge of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and one count of conspiracy to commit the same crime.
Some women cried and talked about still being broken and traumatized by having explicit videos of them posted online and shared among family members, friends, coworkers and their college communities. They spoke of having become addicted to drugs or trying to take their own lives. Others spoke about becoming stronger people despite years of torment by both close associates and online strangers.
“We meet again,” one victim told him. “But this time it’s you who cannot leave.”
Pratt, a 42-year-old New Zealand citizen, admitted in a plea agreement earlier this year that between 2012 and 2019, he conspired to traffic 15 victims, though authorities have said that’s a tiny fraction of the actual victims of the conspiracy.
Women who addressed the court Monday said there were more than 450 total victims. After the hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sasha Foster said that 505 women had shot GirlsDoPorn videos. She said that while not all were victims, the “great bulk” of the women who were interviewed by FBI agents said they’d been deceived by Pratt and did not know their videos “would be plastered all over the internet.”
More than 120 women have been involved in civil litigation against GirlsDoPorn and its related websites, as well as free pornography sites such as PornHub that hosted GirlsDoPorn clips and generated tens of millions of views.
At least one woman who spoke Monday expressed hope that Pratt could change his life and offered him forgiveness. But most unleashed years of pent-up anger, asking the judge to sentence Pratt to the longest possible sentence. “We aren’t here for forgiveness,” one woman told the judge. “We’re here for justice.”
Said another victim: “I ask the court to show no mercy.”
Sammartino’s sentence was more than five years longer than what prosecutors recommended and nearly three years longer than the top end of his federal sentencing guideline range. Pratt forfeited most appeal rights when pleading guilty, but he can appeal the length of his sentence.
In a brief statement to the judge Monday, Pratt said he wanted to “apologize to everyone” and that it was “never my intention to hurt anyone.”
Mariah, who asked to only be identified by her first name, said she and the other women victimized by Pratt were grateful to Sammartino for imposing the lengthy sentence.
In court, the victims told Sammartino that Pratt had destroyed their lives — but also how they overcame the trauma.
“I won,” one woman told Pratt, turning to speak directly to him. “I’m not your victim, I’m your reckoning.”
That woman recounted how in October 2015, she sent him an email demanding that he remove her video from online, which he did not. She and 21 other women later sued him in Superior Court.
On Monday and in previous court filings and hearings for co-defendants, the victims said they suffered relentless torment after online trolls posted their full names and other identifying information online. Many had links or images from the videos emailed to family members, bosses and college administrators. Many spoke of losing careers and lifelong friendships, changing their names and appearances or having to drop out of school or transfer universities. Some talked of using drugs and alcohol to numb themselves and contemplating or attempting suicide.
“The reality is that he lied to these women knowing full well he was going to blow up their lives,” Foster told the judge.
Several of the women, who said they’ve formed a sort of sisterhood of survivors, told the judge that at least 15 of Pratt’s victims have died from suicides or overdoses. Foster said she couldn’t confirm that figure, since FBI agents wouldn’t have been able to make contact with those women.
“What I would say is that number would not at all surprise me, given the number of women who got up there and said that they’ve attempted suicide,” Foster said outside of court.
A mother of one of Pratt’s victims told the judge she hadn’t understood why her daughter suddenly changed and became addicted to drugs several years ago, leading to her overdose death in 2023. It wasn’t until earlier this year that the mother found out about her daughter’s video and realized its release directly coincided with the start of her addiction.
Other victims spoke of banding together to support each other and seek justice, of being survivors and not just victims, of becoming people with the opposite morals and characteristics of Pratt.
“We are an army of survivors,” said the woman who sent him the 2015 email and later sued him in state court. “And we have won.”
Pratt admitted in his plea agreement that he and those who worked for him recruited young women online from across the country as models, but when they arrived in San Diego, they were pressured to have sex on camera. The women were told the videos would go to private DVD collections overseas, but instead they were widely disseminated on the GirlsDoPorn network of sites and free pornography sites.
Pratt’s defense attorney presented emails showing that Pratt informed women before they arrived that it would be an “adult gig” and they would be shooting “adult videos.” Foster said that not all the women received those emails, and some who did were too young to understand exactly what that meant.
One victim told the judge that Pratt provided her with a cake on the day she shot her video, because it was her 18th birthday. Another woman identified in the plea agreement as Victim 1 was also 18 years old when Pratt “rushed (her) through a contract and did not provide her with a copy,” according to his plea agreement. He paid her $2,000 and then ignored her pleas to take the video down when it was posted online nine months later, he admitted.
That woman said in court Monday that she has since graduated from Princeton University, now works in the tech industry and has become a specialist in helping people send takedown notices to websites.
Pratt also admitted in the plea agreement that GirlsDoPorn and its related websites netted him millions of dollars in revenue. Prosecutors said Pratt liquidated his assets in 2019 and fled the U.S. while in the midst of a civil trial in which a San Diego Superior Court judge eventually awarded nearly $13 million to the 22 women who had sued him and the others involved with the GirlsDoPorn site.
Later that year, federal prosecutors unsealed a sprawling indictment with Pratt as the lead defendant. Pratt remained an international fugitive for years as each of his co-conspirators eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced.
He was captured in 2022 in Spain just months after the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List, then extradited to the U.S. last year on the same day Sammartino sentenced his childhood friend and co-defendant Matthew Isaac Wolfe to 14 years in prison.
Sammartino sentenced adult-film actor Ruben Andre Garcia to 20 years in prison — a term that Garcia is appealing — and Theodore “Teddy” Gyi, a cameraman who filmed about 120 of the videos, to four years in prison. Valorie Moser, a former bookkeeper, is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
Pratt’s attorney argued in court Monday and in sentencing documents that Pratt’s only criminal conduct was misrepresenting to women that the videos would not be posted online.
“Had he disclosed that the videos would be posted on the Girls Do Porn website, there would have been no civil case and no criminal case,” his court-appointed defense attorney, Brian White, wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Many of the women who spoke Monday addressed that claim directly, saying they were tricked and coerced from the start and that the deceit went far beyond one lie about where the video would be distributed.
Aside from the main criminal prosecution, the GirlsDoPorn case has spawned several related cases. Alexander Brian Foster was sentenced for creating a retaliation video meant to harass some victims and their lawyers. Douglas “James” Wiederhold, who acted in some of the videos and helped convince women that their videos wouldn’t be posted online, is awaiting sentencing later this year.
The GirlsDoPorn matter has also entangled popular free sites such as PornHub. In 2023, Pornhub’s parent company agreed to pay more than $1.8 million to resolve a criminal probe alleging it profited from sex trafficking through its hosting of GirlsDoPorn videos.
More than 120 women have sued PornHub’s parent company in San Diego federal court, alleging PornHub illegally published sex-trafficking videos. PornHub’s parent company settled the first of those suits under terms that were not disclosed. The second lawsuit remains active but has been stayed pending this week’s sentencings of Pratt and Moser.