French Senate report denounces sexual abuse in porn industry

PARIS -- Sexual and physical abuse in France's porn industry is "systemic" and lawmakers should better regulate the production of videos and protect children who are "heavily exposed" to the content, according to a French Senate report released Wednesday.

The report, titled "Hell Behind the Scenes," was the first prepared for the French parliament to focus on the porn industry, which the authors described as "predatory."

During six months of research, the Senate's delegation for women's rights and gender equality heard from over 50 people, including some involved in the industry, women's rights activists and victims.

"Both the actual volume of pornographic contents accessible to all and their very nature have contributed to make violent sexual acts against women banal," the report's authors wrote.

"Sexual, physical and verbal abuses are widespread in porn, making them systemic. They are not simulated but very real for the women who are being filmed," they added.

In the past two decades, pornography has massively developed globally as video platforms multiplied and social media helped sharing content.

A police investigation into alleged rape, human trafficking and pimping in France's porn industry has called attention to abuse in the business. Dozens of alleged victims have come forward in two separate cases linked to a major video platform and France's leading amateur porn site.

The investigation revealed that the consent of women was not being asked or respected in many occasions.

A French former porn actress and filmmaker, known by her performing name, Nikita Bellucci, was amid those who spoke to the senators because "for once, people working in the porn industry were given a voice," she told the Associated Press. Bellucci would not disclose her full identity to protect her privacy.

Bellucci -- who has been working in the porn industry for more than a decade in France, Eastern Europe and the U.S. -- has always been outspoken about her work. She said she was proud of her job yet stood in the front line to denounce how women tend to be targets of abuse in the industry.

She recalled with much emotion in her voice how, in the early stage of her career, her "consent (was) abolished" while performing a scene. It took her ten years to realize what happened because she had the "impostor's syndrome," she said, referring to the wrong idea that "a porn actress can't be abused because she chose to do this work."

The Senate report aims to alert the government and the broader public to the huge scale of the problem, its authors said. They noted the "massive, ordinary and toxic" viewing of porn by children, despite French law requiring viewers to be at least 18 years old.

The report found that 90% of pornographic scenes include violence and that two thirds of children aged 14 and less have seen pornographic content -- voluntarily or not.

"We must stop having a dated, distorted, watered-down view of porn. Porn today includes violent, degrading, humiliating content," Sen. Annick Billon, co-author and president of the Senate's delegation, said.

"Scenes in which a man, most often several men, up to 50, inflict physical and sexual abuse on women have become standard," she added.

Billon and the other delegation members issued 23 recommendations for enforcing current laws and introducing new regulations.

They include making it a criminal offense to incite the committing of a rape in the context of the porn industry, issuing "dissuasive" fines to make it more difficult for minors to access porn and requiring age-verification mechanisms.

Sen. Laurence Rossignol, report co-author and a former minister in charge of women's right, said the two major cases being investigated by police highlighted some of the industry's methods, including "an initial rape" to "break" women, she said. "That's the same method as in prostitution rings."

To withdraw videos from the internet, producers require women to pay 3,000 to 5,000 euros ($2,900-4,800) -- ten times the fee they were paid for shooting them, the report said.

Rossignol said policies to fight abuse in the porn industry must come as an additional step in the wake of the .MeToo movement that made a political issue of sexual abuse. In 2016 France approved a law against prostitution and sex trafficking that banned buying sex, not selling it.

"What is shocking to us is that when it's about fighting terrorism online, our legal arsenal is useful and efficient. When it's about violence against women, it's not efficient and not applied," Rossignol said.

For Bellucci, the report came a bit too late -- yet the move is positive. She praised the recommendation to reinforce sex education of teenagers, especially at school. "We now live in a society that's hyper-sexualized by the internet and social media. It is very important to address these topics," said the 32-year-old mother of two.

"What we're asking for, above all, is a legal framework. And being actually protected," Bellucci said. As a porn producer and director, she explained how she takes care of the actors, discussing what practices will be performed and requesting their consent at every stage.

However, Bellucci regretted that the platforms which broadcast porn are not being held accountable enough.

Billon, the senator, said lawmakers who worked on the issue came out feeling "different."

"I can humbly say that I had not imagined that," she said. "Frankly, the confidential hearing (of victims) has been difficult, very difficult. That was about abject comments and attitudes, barbarous behavior ... The words we heard, the stories, exceeded any concrete reality we could imagine."