Nikki Benz alleges she was violently assaulted in the workplace in 2016. Her primary assailant’s employer investigated and found her account credible enough to terminate his contract. But because her workplace is an adult film set, and because she is a sex worker, she won’t be getting justice. In fact, she was more vulnerable to being sued for defamation than likely to succeed in pressing charges against two men whose actions were caught on tape. She’s the most recent high-profile example of a sex worker denied the protection of the law because of what she does and who she is, despite its legality.
Benz’s credits for work in the porn industry go back to 2002. When she agreed to do a “boy/girl” scene involving anal sex, she was consenting only to be touched by her scene partner, Ramón Nomar. But after the director, “Tony T,” asked everyone else to leave—purportedly to clear the space to make using a handheld camera easier—it quickly became apparent that the two men left in the room weren’t sticking to any industry standard.
Nomar, Benz alleges, gagged her with her own underwear and covered her face, heightening her fear. Tony T began participating in the scene, Benz said, meaning he was touching her without her consent. He choked her. He’d go on to stomp on her head. She called “cut,” and the men ignored her. Benz’s police report said that Nomar penetrated her so violently “blood splattered on the white walls.” To be paid, she had to say she was okay. But she wasn’t.
Sex workers, onscreen and otherwise, have a much higher risk of sexual assault than the general population but have a much lower chance of getting justice. In New York, 46 percent of indoor sex workers reported they’d been forced into an act by a client; more than 80 percent of street-based sex workers have been violated. Benz’s experience was all too believable to others at risk and just as unbelievable to law enforcement, who discriminate against sex workers.
Benz spoke up soon after the assault on Twitter.
In December, Benz tweeted about on-set sexual violence. From the replies, it’s clear that her story was known to other actors, who backed her.
Another tweet alluded to the production company’s failure.
Benz is pursuing a civil suit, suing Brazzers for $5 million for sexual assault, but that’s the only form of justice she might get. The Los Angeles District Attorney only heard Benz out for 15 minutes after she waited more than a year. Come May, the office announced it would not press charges, citing “insufficient evidence.”
The failure to proceed is all the more surprising given that, when it comes to Tony T, Benz is hardly alone. Director and actor Dana DeArmond backed up her claims, tweeting that Tony T and other Brazzers directors “have all pulled this same shit with me.” After her experience, DeArmond wrote, her agent reprimanded her and she was told to “keep quiet.” Ditto Gen Padova, another actor, who affirmed that she “had a very good idea what [Benz] dealt with.” Two more actors made statements to the same effect.
Just as there are toxic directors, there are toxic actors
Multiple women have alleged that adult film actor James Deen has sexually assaulted them. Ex-girlfriend Stoya, in the same line of work, made her allegations public after seeing Deen praised as a feminist. On Nov. 28, 2015, she tweeted, “That thing where you log in to the internet for a second and see people idolizing the guy who raped you as a feminist. That thing sucks.”
In a second tweet, Stoya elaborated: “James Deen held me down and fucked me while I said no, stop, used my safeword. I just can’t nod and smile when people bring him up anymore.” In response, a second ex-girlfriend tweeted support to Stoya.
A second tweet a day later shed slightly more light on Angel’s support
Another adult actor, Sydney Leathers, reported that Angel had warned her against working with Deen. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Leathers said Angel said Deen ”has boundary issues, basically that he tries to break women.” “I took it to mean that he is dangerous,” said Leathers.
NB: You may recognize Angel’s name if not from her profession then from her political commentary. After former mayor and current Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani disparaged Stormy Daniels’ credibility on the basis of her profession, the Huffington Post sought responses from other actors. Angel’s? “The only people I am screwing are consenting individuals on film and not an entire country.”
One day after Angel chimed in on Deen, on Nov. 30, 2015, The Daily Beast published an essay by adult actor Tori Lux in which she alleged that she, too, had been assaulted by Deen. They were onset together, but didn’t share a scene. Yet he approached her just after she finished performing, before she had dressed again, she wrote.
After asking her aggressively if Lux would like to “sniff his testicles,” Lux alleges that Deen grabbed her throat and pushed her onto a mattress, straddled her, and hit her repeatedly. As soon as she stood, Lux said, he grabbed her by the hair, forced her onto her knees, and shoved her face into his crotch repeatedly before throwing her to the floor.
Even after that, Lux wrote, “I felt pressured to maintain a professional demeanor as this was a major porn set, with other people present and failing to intervene.”
Also on Nov. 30, 2015, adult actor Ashley Fires came forward. The first time she met Deen, she says, he “pick[ed] up another performer like a caveman” and led her off by her hair. He sexually assaulted Fires— “almost raped me,” she recounted—the same day.
“Later on that night, I was getting out of the shower of the communal bathroom at Kink, I reach for my towel to dry off, and he comes up from behind me and pushes himself and his erection into my butt,” she continued. “He pushes me against the sink and starts grabbing on me and I was like, ‘No, no, no James, no,’ and he released me from his grasp, and says, ‘You know, later if you want to fuck around I’m in room whatever-it-was. I was like, ‘Fuck you.’ I didn’t even know this guy, he was so out of line and entitled with my body.”
When Fires was pressed to explain why she wouldn’t work with Deen, she was honest about the encounter, she said. That led Deen to “order” her to stop talking about his assault on her. She pushed back. He told her to tell people that she wouldn’t work with him because he reminded her of her brother instead.
Deen’s aggressively denied the charges on Twitter. Problem is, his Twitter feed also contains gems like this one:
It’s not just men doing the overlooking
There’s a cultural component. In another instance, an actress accused Stormy Daniels, of Trump lawsuit fame, of ignoring her reports of sexual assault on the set of a film Daniels was directing. As she was preparing to do a scene on Nov. 15, 2017, Tasha Reign claims, a crew member groped her and made suggestive sounds. She posted her account on Twitter in January.
“He grabbed my ass and then made Sex humping noises from behind,” Reign replied to Daniels. “He then admitted that he was ‘joking’ right infront [sic] of you.” Reign said she was shaken up all day. “Why on earth would I make that up?” She asked. “I have no ill will, I simply want to speak my truth.”
The Twitter dust-up continued, with Reign pointing out that her disclosure could result in judgment from the industry and characterizing her experience as being “shamed by one of the most important female directors in our business.”
Already in costume, make-up done, Reign went on to do her scene, only dissolving into tears afterward, she said. Her on-set partner, Michael Vegas, was concerned, worried he’d done something, she said. He later confirmed her account. “Right after we wrapped ... I remember seeing Tasha come back into the room. Her demeanor had changed but it was hard to tell why or what had happened,” Vegas said.
In a May interview with The Daily Beast, Reign contrasted Daniels’ statements about her fight to expose Trump—“I always feel like you should stand up for yourself and you should report it”—with the way Daniels treated Reign for her disclosure. “It’s very upsetting to see her speak like that,” Reign told the reporter. “But I know the real you.”
The production company became involved, but its efforts to resolve the issue petered out. In response to Reign’s account, the company told the Daily Beast, “We have been and are appropriately investigating.” She came out of the experience with feelings echoing those of Lux: People knew, and they didn’t do anything.
Producing pornography is legal, yet actors are denied the protections of the law
Sometimes when she tells others what she’s been through, Lux wrote, they ask why she didn’t call the police. She summarizes the problem adeptly:
[P]eople—including the police—tend to believe that sex workers have placed themselves in harm’s way, and therefore can’t be assaulted. Of course, this claim couldn’t be further from the truth, as being involved in sex work does not equate to being harmed. Despite porn being a legal form of sex work, and it occurring in a controlled environment such as a porn set, this blame-the-victim mentality is still inherent in much of society.
Antipathy toward sex workers means that they’re not only more vulnerable to assault and subject to very public forms of condemnation, but also at greater risk of retaliation in the forms of additional attacks, slander, and blacklisting.
Consider how this anonymous Twitter user reacted to Nikki Benz coming forward:
After Leigh Raven and wife Nikki Hearts posted an hour-long account of Raven being assaulted on set, the most tangible result was that the director-actor duo lost work.
I emailed Raven to ask her what she’d prioritize to change. “Currently, anybody in our industry can be a ‘director,’ she replied. “That’s a problem.”
It’s left to individual directors and actors to protect one another. Raven and Hearts have their own system: “My wife and I have stopped many scenes to ‘check in’ on talent when they seem the slightest bit uncomfortable.”
“We realize that when you’re in the middle of a scene at times it can be hard to speak up,” she relates. That point’s clear from their video, too. What’s necessary, Raven writes, is for all directors “to be present, compassionate, and aware.” It’s hard to know now what the solution is, she says, but she proposes background checks as a starting place.
The bad actors—that is, the actors, directors, and production companies that commit or sanction assault—are well-known. Without legal intervention, and given limited competition, survivors who want, or need, to continue working in the industry have few other options.
Patterns of assault within the pornography industry likely mirror those experienced by sex workers writ large. Younger, less-established actors will be more vulnerable to professional reprisals. In short, they’re easier targets. An urban emergency room reported that one in five sexual assaults reported to police involved sex workers. There was a trend: survivors involved in sex work tended to be younger and poorer. They also had more injuries.
If a rape caught on camera, as in the case of Nikki Benz, isn’t even charged, what hope do sex workers with far less proof have?
Where sex work has been criminalized, reporting can result in arrest—of the sex worker—and violence at the hands of law enforcement. If a sex worker’s sexual assault case goes to court, they can face bias there, too.
In Philadelphia, a judge changed charges against a man who raped a woman at gunpoint from rape and sexual assault to “theft of services.” She said it “demeans women who are really raped” to prosecute the rape of sex workers. Survivors who have engaged in sex work also are not protected by rape shield laws in most states; their profession is used against them. That means that courts officially endorse the view Lux exposed—that sex workers somehow have less right to consent.