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Update: Underage Brit Porn Performer?
March 3, 2008 | 16 Comments
We’ve had a helluva time tracking down√¢‚Ǩ‚Äùand verifying√¢‚Ǩ‚Äùpertinent information in the case of Rufus Ffoulkes, who was recently arrested and jailed for nearly three years in the U.K. for, among other things, directing a condomless porn scene with an underaged performer. (Scroll down a few stories or click here for our first story.) With the help of several industrious Constant Readers who live in Germany and England (thanks, guys) we’ve got a few more details, but confirming and sourcing them is laborious. England’s Pink News broke the story, but it did not occur to them to identify the film that could potentially contain an underaged performer. Over the weekend, an anonymous commenter to our original story posted quite a few details (visit our first story to read the whole thing) and while I am still looking to verify certain details, I think I’ve identified the film with this possibly underaged performer. I am qualifying this because it has not been independently verified that the model in question was indeed under eighteen years of age. Click here for the details…
This is what our anonymous commenter writes (by the way, I think I know who it is, but won’t share my suspicions for the time being). There is a model identified as “Richard” to whom Mr. Ffoulkes owed money, and who claimed he “may have been” underage when he filmed for Ffoulkes, and another named “Harry” whom Richard claims was just 16 when he shot for the director. Our commenter writes, “Prior to going to the police, Richard approached three companies that were selling DVDs that featured himself asking them to assist him in getting payment from Ffoulkes. He also mentioned that he was ‘probably’ underage when he filmed those scenes, although offered no proof at that time or no evidence that the IDs on file for him with those three companies were not genuine.”
Those films were: BAREBACK BRIT BOYS (Load, now LoadXXX); DADDY’S BAREBACK SLAVE BOYS (Shoot Productions/STB); and ROYAL RAW AUDITIONS 1 (Puppy Productions). Per our sources, BAREBACK BRIT BOYS was apparently only available in the U.K. on DVD (still checking) and DADDY’S BAREBACK SLAVE BOYS was an internet rental.
“As soon as Richard approached Load and STB with doubts about his age, Load immediately took BAREBACK BRIT BOYS off the market and STB immediately stopped selling DADDY’S BAREBACK SLAVE BOYS. This was over two years ago, and neither title has been commercially available since,” our commenter says.
However, ROYAL RAW AUDITIONS 1 was produced commercially and sold to the United States. Puppy Productions has apparently stopped selling it, but copies are still floating around out there. (As well, ROYAL RAW AUDITIONS 2 and 3 were produced in 2006 and ’07, but we’re talking about only the first installment.) It is “the only film that industry participants should withdraw,” our commenter writes. “No other films were or are in doubt. The U.K. police investigation was not actually an investigation into use of underage models. It was a local police investigation (without any national police involvement) into Ffoulkes defrauding several models by not paying for their services. At no time have the police widened their investigation on the underage angle beyond Richard and (because Richard mentioned him) Harry.”
It should be stated once again that we have not yet verified independently that “Harry” was the performer who was the source of the criminal complaint that landed Rufus Ffoulkes in jail. His only scene that was made commercially available was ROYAL RAW AUDITIONS 1; we recommend retailers and VOD sites carrying this title to pull it and to contact Puppy Productions directly. Better safe than sorry. Stay tuned for the next turn of the screw.
Comments
16 Comments so far
Rufus Ffoulkes’ trial and sentencing has established that he did shoot porn (both photographs and video) with a 16 year old in 2005. Beyond that, it’s all conjectures and unofficial tips, until the producer/distributor (allegedly Puppy Productions) comes forward and confirms it. So far, the only thing pointing at that particular title is the fact that it has already been pulled from the studio’s online store and from VOD theaters carrying Puppy Productions content. Indeed, if what the anonymous tipper claimed, that Dusedo, Puppy Productions’ exclusive European distributor, wouldn’t take the film, is correct, that must have occurred in 2006, so there were already people questioning that title’s legality at that point.
Another claim by yesterday’s anonymous tipster deserves some comment. He wrote: “At the time Ffoulkes filmed the questionable scenes with Richard and Harry, he was not doing this professionally – he filmed the scenes for his own private use… Ffoulkes subsequently entered the industry in a far more professional manner and, in partnership with others, has made dozens of films over the past two years. Last year his company were the largest producer of twink material in the UK. Everything made since he turned √¢‚Ǩ≈ìprofessional√¢‚Ǩ¬ù was filmed to US identification standards with pictures of the model holding up next to his face his passport or drivers licence. However when he first entered the industry he made the mistake of using the privately filmed scenes with Richard and Harry alongside new professionally-filmed footage”
Now, it’s certainly true Ffoulkes was one of the most prolific exponents of British bareback porn, and that’s indeed a phenomenon of 2006-2007. But a brief search of the bbfc.net website shows that as early as 2004 a film of his for Load was getting an R-18 certificate from the British Board of Film Classification. That seems professional to me. (What’s on screen is another matter, obviously.)
What I am getting at is, this exercise in damage control would be much more convincing if it were done entirely in the open, and if some explanation was given as to why no information was made available until news of Ffoulkes’ sentencing came out.
Just wondering: What happens if/when the age of consent is lowered in European countries (as the Brit activists have been pushing for), does that mean the U.S. has to stop importing all titles because we’d never know what’s legal here or possible kiddie porn? It’s too bad for Ffloulkes the British law wasn’t changed when it was up for a vote a while back.
J√ɬ©r√ɬ¥me—I wasn’t made completely aware that there was an underage model in the movie Royal Raw Auditions introducing Harry, until Rufus Ffloukes admitted it to me last week. I then immediately sent a letter out asking the movie to be pulled. He claimed earlier(January-08)that he only pled guilty with the understanding that the model provided a fraudulent passport. As far as Duesdo not taking the movie, there were several movies they chose not to carry but did pick up many titles that were filmed by Mr. Ffloukes. As far as our relationship with Duesdo, I decided early this year that we would not continue our relationship.
There was no damage control on my end, quite frankly this was a model that provided documents that the producer couldn’t verify, now there is your story! Should the model be held accountable for providing false documents?
“Should the model be held accountable for providing false documents?”
Why not? Although realize he can only be held liable as a juvenile. So you know, we are probably talking about a slap on the wrist, at best, for the model.
But I suppose it would be worthwhile to do anyways, if only to send a message.
And it would in no way excuse the producer for gross negligence of course. The “I’m shocked a 16 y/o boy would ever tell me a lie!” defense won’t cut it.
And what makes this case even more egregious is the fact Ffoulkes either knew (or strongly suspected) he had this problem, as early as May 2007 if I am reading the info in the updated post above correctly…and he apparantly lied to his distributor, and tried to sweep it all under the rug…much as Bryan Kocis tried to do here in the States, with similarly disasterous consequences.
Since Puppy seems to have been lied to by Mr. Ffoulkes until the last minute (again much like Bryan Kocis did), I’d say they’ve probably handled this situation adequately; although at this point I think it would be prudent to take a good hard look at every other Ffoulkes video in the stream of commerce right now.
Thomas Bjorn:
Thank you for your comments. I realize these are not easy times, so I don’t mean to harrass you. But with all due respect, the reports covering Ffoulkes’ trial and sentencing seem to say the model didn’t lie or forge his ID. The anonymous source who wrote over the weekend mentioned that Ffoulkes didn’t ask for proper ID in the first place because this was meant to be a home movie. If, as revealed by one of the comments on this thread, adult gay males are still unable to grasp the difference between age of consent and legal requirements to appear in pornography, it is entirely believable the minor himself didn’t know any better. Ffoulkes on the other hand did, he is the responsible party and that’s why he is in jail now.
Anything that ties gay porn to criminal behaviour is bad news for all lovers of gay porn and for everyone connected to it, one way or another. And the reason is that the enemies of gay porn (and of porn in general) will jump on such incidents to blast the whole genre, no matter how legitimate its content. The only way to prevent this is for “the industry” to police itself and to distance itself from such rotten apples. For instance, it would be great if we could be sure that when Rufus Ffoulkes is a free man again, eighteen months from now probably, no distributor or producer of gay porn will employ his “talents” any more. Things being what they are in “the industry”, it is unfortunately quite unlikely that’s how things will happen.
@Thomas Bjorn: Re your reference to my intellectual capacity, the legal age to appear in porn is the same as the age of consent in whatever country the video is made. I was not referring to the record-keeping requirements but simply the possibility of DVD’s at some point being legal in one place and illegal in others.
“the legal age to appear in porn is the same as the age of consent in whatever country the video is made”
Absolutely not! The legal age for a model to appear in porn is the legal majority, i.e. 18 in most countries. That’s very different from the age of consent, which is 15 in most European countries. And in any case, what is relevant is the law of the country where a video is under investigation. For instance, it appears that it was ok until the mid-1990s in Germany for models of 16 to 18 years of age to appear in porn. So videos were made in Germany or for the German market in accordance with this. Those same videos were always illegal in most other countries, etc… and their owners liable to prosecution for possession of child pornography.
TB: So if you’re saying the legal age of 18 for porn is uniform across borders and genders and will always stay that way regardless of other circumstances, then I did mispeak, but I do find it interesting that there is such universal agreement on this when there is so little on anything else.
J√ɬ©r√ɬ¥me–How many sites have you been too that have covered this story? How many versions were presented? I’m stunned at every story I read because it has some inaccuracies. I saw the actual court document that Mr. Ffloukes signed which said, he was unaware at the time of the filming the model was underage. And do you think they would have just given him 32 months for producing child pornography? Not attacking you as well, just wanting the facts out, so this story doesn’t get blown out of proportion. The anonymous source seems to go from site to site gathering information then posting it to the next site. Nobody actually knows who the underage model is, except that he is in Royal Raw Auditions introducing Harry. Research that one and see where it came out. Trust that all has been taken care of and I’m sickened by the fact that I have a movie in my line up that has an underage model in it. There is no room in our industry besides our society for this behavior. The unfortunate part of this situation is the model wasn’t held accountable, why…The initial charges didn’t include the using of an underage model. Also before the story broke, I had already sent letters out asking the movie to be pulled and to contact me if there were any questions, so I was taking care of the situation. There are two stories here, a producer didn’t pay his models and how can producers validate IDs not only to protect themselves but minors….I know we want to sensationalize things but in the end it only ends up hurting us, and in us I mean the Industry.
As I tried to explain, it did change in Germany and went up to 18 a little more than ten years ago. One very good reason for the legal age in porn to be the legal majority is that performing in an adult film involves some form of contract and it makes sense that minors shouldn’t be allowed to subscribe to such documents. The other obvious reason is that the milieu of porn being (too often) what it is, it’s certainly better that minors stay out of it.
God, Jerome (and T. Bjorn) I am very sorry I got totally confused about who was posting what. It was Jerome who insulted me, and credit where it is due. Seriously, sorry for the confusion.
Will:
sorry if you felt insulted; I was just pointing out that you were misinformed on a specific point, and obviously lots of gay men interested in porn are too.
TB:
I just read three online sources: the PINK NEWS piece, the local news story from Norfolk and the Pakistani DAILY TIMES. According to the local news story, the prosecution claimed that the “16-year-old boy, who Ffoulkes asked to appear in a film (initially) refused, but after being asked repeatedly and offered √Ǭ£500, he agreed.” This doesn’t sound like a kid desperate to make it in porn and willing to forge ID to do so. Of course, everything is possible, but this is one case (and Ffoulkes’ past record is something to consider as well) where blaming the model seems a bit too convenient. And as to the leniency of Ffoulkes’ sentence, I seem to remember that Brian Kocis, in his 2002 case in Pa., got away scot-free for something very similar.
But all this is complicated. I certainly agree that this is hurting the Industry. I’ll just add, specifically, waiting to the very last minute to come clean, and until the mainstream media turns this into a bona fide “scandal”, is hurting the Industry. Everybody can make and has made mistakes, including doing business with unsavoury characters. Once the harm is done, what helps, if I may, is a prompt response. Otherwise, as I was writing earlier, such a fiasco is only giving more weapons to the enemies of gay porn.
“And as to the leniency of Ffoulkes√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ sentence, I seem to remember that Brian Kocis, in his 2002 case in Pa., got away scot-free for something very similar.”
Precisely.
Didn’t Kocis have to register as a sex offender or some such thing?
If I remember correctly, even that was overturned by a judge a few months before his death.
“Didn√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t Kocis have to register as a sex offender or some such thing?”
Nope.