FacialAbuse Porn Studio Accused of Ignoring Consent and Injuring Models
The New Jersey based studio, D&E Media, which produces Facial Abuse and Ghetto Gaggers, allegedly ignores consent withdrawal, injures its models, and harasses and intimidates their critics.
*** Trigger Warning: Sexual Violence and Suicide ***
Several adult actresses have accused a New Jersey based pornography studio of flagrantly ignoring their withdrawal of consent, inflicting injuries that limited their ability to function for days afterwards and provoked them to experience suicidal thoughts and ideations.
They say that this studio inflicted grievous physical and psychological wounds on them. The studio has also surveilled, intimidated, and retaliated against some of their models, and against myself personally.
The studio’s legal name is D&E Media and has owned various brands since around 2003, but this investigation will focus on the brand that has produced the most complaints. The brand is “Facial Abuse” (FA). They also produce another brand known as “Ghetto Gaggers” (GG).
The scenes they produce are intended to dehumanize and humiliate the female models. The content of these scenes and the suffering of many of the women involved will make the rest of the article very difficult to read for some, beginning with the next paragraph.
D&E productions normally go more or less the same across their core brands. A female model, and one or two male models perform a scene in which the woman is subjected to forceful oral sex, sometimes called face fucking, normally in three different positions. The scene then moves to vaginal and/or anal penetrative sex. Changes in position are often punctuated with the female model being urinated on and sometimes drinking the urine.
It is not uncommon at all for the women to vomit repeatedly as a consequence of being gagged with a penis. And in more recent years, it is even encouraged and expected, to an extent that it is unusual when the woman does not vomit. As confirmed by one former model, female models are fed protein shakes or other food prior to filming to ensure repeated vomiting.
At the end, a dog bowl filled with the vomit and urine that resulted from the scene is poured on the model’s head.
In one recurring position, called “position two” (because it is the second of three oral sex positions), the woman is gagged with a penis while laying on her back on a couch, such that her head dangles upside down over the edge of the couch. This results in her vomit running down her face, often into her nose and obstructing her breathing.
It is during the “face fucking” where the majority of complaints documented here take place, and they will be described in detail in Part One.
I described my interviews and provided videos of problematic scenes to Derek Smith, the owner and founder of the Derek Smith Law Group, a law firm specializing in sexual harassment, sexual assault, and employment discrimination, to obtain his legal opinion. I followed up two days later to ask if he had had an opportunity to watch them.
He responded that he could not even finish the first one. He added “Even for someone who specializes in rape cases, I was disturbed.”
Some of what you have already read was likely difficult to read. I encourage you to reflect on the fact that what is difficult to read is even harder to experience yourself.
The women who told me their stories did not have the privilege of looking away.
Part One: Sexual Violence
“Anna”
Sometime in late 2021, Anna (neither her legal name nor her stage name) performed for FA.
Anna says she was recruited for FA by a man named Ernie Rossi, who seems to do most of the recruiting as well as copyright complaints for D&E. He identifies himself as the CEO of D&E in their copyright take down requests.
She vividly described injuries that she sustained and their consequences on her. She said she had a black eye from being slapped in the face and extensive and very dark bruising on her buttocks from spanking and provided me photos to that effect.
A code of conduct published by Kink.com, a porn studio specializing in BDSM, speaks to the issue of onset injuries: “Marking beneath the skin, including bruising, should not be substantial even if the performer consents. If bruising starts to appear, the hitting on that area must stop.”
The standards of D&E, as will become clear, fall grossly short of what is required elsewhere in the adult industry. Anna concurs, and says the standards of D&E “were bullshit in comparison” to other studios she had worked with.
I asked Donald Vollenweider, an owner and occasional director at D&E, in 2021 about injuries sustained on set. He answered “Injuries? This is starting to sound more like a fairy tale than fact.” He then added “There is no reason for concern. We are not in the business of hurting people. We pay well, everyone leaves happy.”
Anna told me that “I feel like the whole time I was just getting the fucking shit kicked out of me.” She says she struggled to walk for days afterward, even to go to the bathroom, “I could barely go pee.” She says that she explicitly told them not to hit her hard in the face and not to leave injuries worse than skin redness for strikes to her buttocks. She says despite this request, they hit her “full force.”
Anna says that that they did a pre-shoot interview in which they discussed her “do’s and don’ts” or the sex acts she is OK with and those she is not. Despite this interview taking place, she says “then when the video started, they didn’t care about anything that I had to say in the consent video. They did not give a shit. They pretty much do everything I said no to.”
She explains that she was kept in positions in which she was anatomically unable to withdraw consent. One such position, which other models have been kept in, involves one male model who has his penis in the woman’s mouth, while a second male model stands behind the female and pulls her wrists behind her back, sometimes with his foot in between her shoulder blades.
This position caused great and lasting pain for Anna and she told me that she could not even put a t-shirt on for days afterwards. She agreed that she could not withdraw consent in this position, though she would have, had she been able to. This is because all consent withdrawal methods discussed required the movement of the hands or a verbal cue, both of which are impossible in this position. She also confirmed that they provided no alternative method of consent withdrawal, such as shaking her head or blinking her eyes.
The two male performers in this scene were David Horter and Michael Sims. Horter is known by the stage name “Bootleg.” Anna said that the “younger” one had particular disregard for her consent. This is a reference to Sims, who is 18 years younger than Horter. Sims prefers to keep his face off camera and often wears a mask in his scenes.
Anna told me that “I kept tapping him and he wouldn’t let me up” and “I literally dug my nails into his thighs and drew blood until he fucking let me up so I could breathe” and “I started hitting him and he still wasn’t letting me up.” Though the blood she mentions is not apparent in the video, everything else she says is plainly visible in the final cut.
Throughout the scene, she audibly and visibly struggles and many of her consent withdrawal taps receive delayed recognition to the point where they are effectively ignored. Anna smacks Sims’s legs forcefully and repeatedly, and he responded by continuing to press his penis into her mouth, and withdrawing several seconds later.
Sims repeatedly ordered Anna to “put your hands down” when she used her hands to protect her face from slaps and/or to secure room to breathe. This is despite tapping being the main method of consent withdrawal agreed to and despite her using her hands to protect herself from forceful strikes to the face that she explicitly asked not to take place.
At one point Sims tells Anna “get your hands off me or I’ll fucking slap the shit out of you.”
Kink’s code of conduct prohibits threats of this kind: “It is prohibited to taunt or dare a performer regarding the safe or slow-down words. This includes threatening consequences if the safe word is used.” In this case, Sims threatens to harm Anna if she does not remove her hands from him, which she has no choice but to do in order to withdraw consent while unable to speak.
Sims taunted Anna in ways that acknowledged the damage he was doing to her such as when he said “this cock is going to give you nightmares later.”
He appeared to openly relish in her discomfort and shouted things such as “Look at the panic in her face!” and “Watch this bitch struggle!” as she squirmed away and struggled to breathe while gagged with his penis. Her face is clearly strained and terrified in these moments, and she appears to cry more than once.
Over the course of this scene, Anna is slapped, urinated on, verbally taunted and ridiculed, and forcefully gagged with penises until she pukes on set and all over her face and body.
Anna told me that she contemplated suicide for a long time afterwards.
She said “I wanted to fucking kill myself after that happened.” She added that “I feel like that stuff is so traumatizing. It’s hard to get out of your head. I would not be surprised if girls killed themselves because of the trauma from that.” A prescient remark, given that there is an entire section on suicide in this article that we are rapidly approaching.
Sometime after the shoot, Anna claims to have been contacted by Vollenweider through a mutual friend. Anna claims that Vollenweider apologized to her and said that he had fired the director of her scene.
I asked Vollenweider if this was true, and he answered “I never fired anyone.” I cannot confirm if the director was fired, but I have been unable to find recent scenes in which I recognize his voice when he had previously been a frequent director.
Both Sims and Horter continue to appear in the majority of new FA and GG scenes as of publication.
Derek Smith, an attorney specializing in sexual harassment and assault, says that this scene “definitely sounds like sexual assault.” He continued, “When you withdraw consent, anything after is sexual assault or rape.” He added that this concept applies just as surely to sex workers as it would to anybody else.
Anna was 19 years old at the time of filming.
Clayra Beau
In December 2010, Clayra Beau (her stage name), traveled to New York to shoot with FA.
Beau’s scene contains a few breaks and she confirms that she had to ask for many pauses, before eventually ending the scene early. She says that she struggled to breathe at many points and that the scene “got so rough so fast.”
Like Anna, she endured physical injuries for days afterward. She told me “I couldn’t swallow. The blood vessels in my eyes had burst to the point that I couldn’t see straight.” These injuries were endured as a result of direct slaps to her face from the two male performers.
She explained that, “With them, it wasn’t that they don’t stop, it’s that they legit push it further, and they want to hurt you.”
The two male performers in Beau’s scene included the now incarcerated Paul Kryscuk. Kryscuk was arrested in connection with a plot to destroy power plants, in the hope that it would provoke a race war. Kryscuk’s full story is beyond the scope of this article, but has been reported on elsewhere.
Vollenweider directed Beau’s scene.
Some of these injuries are documented by pictures taken around that time, and their authenticity is confirmed by her then husband, who witnessed Beau endure these injuries after the shoot was over. I will refer to her ex-husband as Mike and withhold his last name.
Beau says that one model did not stop when she signaled for him to stop, “I tapped his thighs because I couldn’t breathe anymore and he didn’t care. He actually grabbed the back of my head and pulled me closer and I had to, from kneeling, push on his thighs, get my feet underneath me, and literally launch my entire body weight backward to get off of him.”
This is visible in the final cut, and the performer she is referring to is Kryscuk.
Beau emphasized that they agreed before the shoot that a tap on the leg was a signal to stop immediately, and she is certain about this. She says that this signal was not respected at all. Clayra also said that they told her to make a “timeout” gesture with her hands if she needed to withdraw consent while unable to speak. This gesture however, and Beau noted this too, is anatomically impossible to make while in certain positions that Beau and others have been held in. Anna made a similar observation.
Mike confirms that Beau’s understanding was that tapping meant to end the current sex act immediately.
During one stoppage in filming, Beau says she cried over the phone to Mike, which he recalls. According to Beau, one of the male models made a joke that it is tedious when girls cry in the bathroom because it makes the scene take longer.
Beau says she had shot with other studios in the past who had higher standards, and named Kink.com explicitly. From her past experience with Kink, she said that she had certain expectations about consent withdrawal, including both gestures and verbal cues.
D&E fell far below these standards, as she explained “when you say BDSM you have an idea that like, ok it’s going to look rough, but the second you say stop it stops, and that is NOT the way that it is with Facial Abuse.” (Emphasis original)
Beau told me that she complained to the director and others during the shoot about her consent not being respected. She said they would pause for a moment, reassure her, resume, and then still not respect her consent. Beau said she ended the scene early and was therefore paid only $400 of the agreed-upon $1,000 fee.
Beau told me that “They would not have cared if I died, and they would have left me outside of an emergency room and not given a shit. Like that’s how awful they are.”
Smith noted that the facts of Beau’s case are very similar to Anna’s, and that the observations he made in her case apply in Beau’s as well. He said “It sounds like sexual assault.”
Bailey Rae
Sometime around February 2013, Bailey Rae (stage name), then 22, says she traveled from Florida to New York to film a scene with FA. Her scene was most likely shot in New Jersey.
Rae explained that “they don’t tell you anything realistically about what you’re getting yourself into beforehand”, “they didn’t tell me anything about the scene or what was expected of me or anything” and “I didn’t know at all that it was going to be that aggressive.”
She added “I never even knew that it was called Facial Abuse” and “There was NEVER, there was NEVER a point in time that they even mentioned the name of the studio to me.” (Emphasis original)
Rae explained to me that she was addicted to heroin at the time of the shoot, and was suffering from withdrawal symptoms when she arrived in New York. She said that the director of the scene, who goes by the stage name Jimmy Hooligan (I have been unable to confirm his legal name with certainty), purchased heroin for her in New York. She says she witnessed the sale herself and that Hooligan understood that she would be using the heroin later that day.
Hooligan then drove her to the studio. Rae explained that she was high on the same heroin during the contract signing, “I kept nodding off while signing the paperwork and I remember they had to keep waking me up.” She says she did not and could not read the contract.
As it happens, Kink also has rules for when a performer begins to lose consciousness, saying “action must stop immediately.”
I once expressed concern to Vollenweider about models losing consciousness, he answered “Looses consciousness. Wtf.”
He apparently considered this to be an absurd concern, despite the apparent risk of loss of consciousness from the following acts often seen in D&E films: strikes to the head, choking, being placed upside down, and obstruction of breathing. From this response, it seems likely that D&E has no protocol whatsoever for even a brief loss of consciousness.
Rae was also high during the shoot itself: “I think anybody with eye balls could tell that I was high.”
Kink’s code of conduct prohibits this as well: “No one may be under the influence of alcohol or drugs on set.”
Throughout the scene, she struggled to breathe, and complained of pain from various sex acts. At the end of the scene, she called the crew “sick fucks”, and added “it was miserable and degrading and you all fucking suck.”
She says she was never warned of the potential for injury, but endured many injuries all the same: “my throat was hurt and swollen” and “my cheeks were sore, my throat was sore, I had bruises on my butt cheeks.”
The emotional pain lasted longer. She told me that this scene is her “deepest darkest secret of my life.” While holding back tears, she told me “the whole thing is still very heartbreaking for me.” After the scene, she began to cut herself and tried to take her own life.
She explained that she endured the scene because she had bills to pay, “If I did say no they would not have paid me”. This was especially problematic because Rae would have struggled to get back home to Florida without being paid because of her financial situation, and would have been effectively stranded in New Jersey had she decided to end the scene early.
Despite this, she tells me she was not raped, because if she had asked to leave, she does not believe that they would have physically held her there.
“I wasn’t raped, I could have said ‘no’, I could have stopped it”, she told me. She also verbally affirmed that the scene was consensual during filming, and this affirmation is present in the final cut of the scene. However, she said so while under the influence of heroin.
However, during my interview with Rae, I asked her: “So the decision you made was yours, but it wasn’t necessarily an informed one?”
She responded, “exactly, correct […] It was a decision that was made under the influence of drugs and with very little information of what I was getting myself into.”
I then asked if she agreed with the following: “It sounds like they deceived you, misled you, into agreeing to shoot with them, got you high on a mind altering drug, and then put you in a position where you couldn’t afford to leave the studio, even though you were experiencing things that were uncomfortable and that you didn’t expect?”
She answered simply, “Yes. Yes, that is accurate.”
I asked her if she felt that the heroin impaired her ability to withdraw consent, she answered “Yes. 1000%. Absolutely.”
She had been offered $1500 plus expenses for the scene but if she “tapped out”, meaning end the scene early, she would not be paid at all. This included her exit expenses, and as a result she would have had difficulty funding her way back home.
Rae had to complete a scene whose contents she felt misled about, in which she was provided mind-altering drugs immediately beforehand, and injured during, just to make enough money to get home and avoid being stranded in another state indefinitely.
Smith explains that “anytime someone has sex with another person or engages in sexual acts with another person who is objectively speaking incapable of consent, such as they’re incredibly intoxicated, or as you said ‘high on heroin’, […] there is no consent.” He adds that one cannot give a voluntary and knowing signature while intoxicated and that he sees “possible rape” and “a voidable contract” in this case.
Smith adds that this could be a case under the Sex Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
“Rachel”
Early in 2020, Rachel (neither her stage nor legal name) shot a scene with FA. She described her scene as “a very traumatic experience.”
Like Rae, Rachel says she was not adequately warned beforehand, “I had no idea what I would be doing until I got there and when I realized what I was gonna be doing I was too scared to say no because I was the only female there surrounded by 5 men, so I was afraid of what they would do if I didn’t follow through with my word.”
Rachel’s comment that she did not feel safe withdrawing consent is one that is consistent with what is observable in her scene. In several cases, she says she does not want to perform a specific sex act but eventually complies upon repeated urges to do so.
Early in the scene, Vollenweider instructs Rachel to lick Horter’s anus. She shakes her head no and says “I can’t.” Vollenweider answers, “just one lick, it’s clean, trust me.” She does so once and disagreed that it was clean.
Later in the video, Vollenweider instructs Horter to urinate on Rachel. She says “Please don’t. Don’t do it on my face, please.” Vollenweider answered “It’s going on your face. You don’t have to swallow it, but it’s going on your face.”
Vollenweider himself approaches Rachel shortly after to urinate on her and orders her to open her mouth. She mumbles “mhm” to indicate a negative response or a refusal. Vollenweider shouts “open your mouth!” And she did so.
This pattern of initial denial, followed by pestering and/or shouting from multiple men more than twice her age, before her eventual acquiescence is repeated throughout the scene. Rachel’s assertion that she did so because she felt unsafe to say no is consistent with this pattern.
Vollenweider once told me that “nothing happens that isn’t discussed.” Frankly, I don’t see how this is possible in Rachel’s scene.
This pattern also violates another requirement of Kink’s code of conduct. The code explicitly prohibits trying to persuade models into changing their boundaries during the shoot: “New limits checklists are required for every shoot and must be respected. It is prohibited to try to convince a performer to change their limits before or during a scene.”
Rachel explained that the verbal abuse in the scene was cruel to a degree that she did not expect, “What really was the breaking point was when they started talking about how I got raped and they laughed at me and made me feel like I was nothing.”
This remark about “how I got raped” is actually in reference to the way they mocked her for having been raped as a minor and not an acknowledgement that they had raped her themselves.
During the shoot, Vollenweider, who directed the scene, repeatedly presses her to divulge more details on the sexual abuse she survived as a child. Vollenweider asks her who had a larger penis, the man who raped her as a minor, or Bootleg (Horter), the male performer who was having sex with her at the time.
Rachel says to Vollenweider at one point “please stop talking about it” and appears to be crying. Vollenweider responded with additional questions. He asks her what was worse, the scene they were still filming or having been raped as a minor, and what she would say to her rapist if he saw this video.
She answered that the rape was worse but did not answer the second question. Rachel openly weeps more than once in the scene and is ruthlessly mocked for it. At one point, Horter, at Vollenweider’s direction, puts Rachel over his knee and spanks her and tells to her to say “I’ll stop crying, Uncle Bootleg” as she weeps.
Rachel’s life was upended because of this scene. She said that “before I knew it basically my whole town saw the video and they would walk around laughing at me and calling me disgusting so I ended up moving to a whole new state and I lost all my friends.”
Rachel was 18 at the time of filming.
Part Two: Suicide
Before developing this section, I want to say that I have no direct evidence whatsoever that D&E has ever caused anyone to die by suicide.
What I do have though, are three living sources who said that their experience with D&E caused them to seriously consider taking their own lives, two of which were outlined in the previous section. One of them, Rae, would actually make an attempt to take her life which failed, and she attributed this to her scene.
This story could not have been written without the courageous women who decided to participate in it. Had they ended their own lives, their stories would have died with them. I rather enjoyed speaking with them in our interviews despite the darkness of the subject. I found all of them to be highly intelligent, insightful and compassionate people. I hope they read this paragraph and understand how valuable they are.
In addition to my living sources, I want to highlight a case of one actress, who died by suicide after performing for D&E. She passed away in Ohio, where autopsies are often public record, so I was able to read her autopsy.
Multiple loved ones of the actress declined or ignored requests to comment on this story. I have chosen to withhold her stage name out of respect for her family. I will refer to her as “Emily.”
I am also withholding the male performers’ names, not to protect their identities, but because they could be used to deduce Emily’s. The male performers did not respond to requests for comment.
Emily shot two scenes with D&E, the first was with Black on Black Crime (BOBC) and her second was with GG. BOBC produces the same sort of work as the other brands, except with a black male a black female, and it is shot in California with a different crew.
When she is first introduced on camera for the BOBC scene, Emily appears happy and enthusiastic. This demeanor would quickly change. The male performer repeatedly slaps her in the face with an intensity and frequency that is greater than most other D&E films. Emily begins to cry and whimper, to which the male performer answers “shut the fuck up” and “open your mouth bitch.”
Though the man in this scene is not Michael Sims, he exhibited many of the same alarming behaviors apparent in Anna’s scene. Emily would use her hands to protect her face, similar to Anna’s same reflex in her scene with Sims. The male performer yanks her hands away and continues to slap her.
The male performer, like Sims, acknowledged the psychological damage he was inflicting, with a quote that is eerily similar to what Sims told Anna, “You’re going to be dreaming about this dick.”
While in position two, the man forced his fingers down Emily’s throat. She turned over in an attempt to move away. The male then mounted her from behind and continued manually gagging her. This caused Emily to vomit. Emily can be seen pulling at his arm, before lightly tapping his ankle. The actor relents a couple of seconds later.
This sequence again demonstrates how grossly inadequate D&E’s consent withdrawal methods are. Their methods do not account for a panic reflex. That is, when an actress prioritizes addressing the immediate hazard to her, and therefore does not recall the consent withdrawal method agreed to in a timely manner. There was also apparently nobody else on set who could have noticed Emily’s panicked demeanor and called a cut in the action.
Kink’s code provides for consent withdrawal gestures such as “dropping an item held in the hand” which is intended to be used in cases in which a model is unable to speak, but which is also likely to be satisfied by a model who is panicking.
Sometime later, Emily would do a scene in New Jersey for GG, with a different crew. Her demeanor at the beginning of the scene is very different. She is visibly and audibly afraid, and she struggles to enunciate her words and sustain eye contact. It is unclear what the immediate cause of this was.
The director in this scene berates her and yells at her aggressively. The two male performers spit on her as she whimpers and cries. The director told her during the scene, while she continued to cry, that “you can cry all you want. We don’t care.”
The scene lasts about 15 minutes, when they would normally last about an hour. This suggests that the tears were not theatrical, or something requested by the director.
Emily died by suicide approximately three years later. I have withheld the precise mechanism of death, but there were certain substances in her system, which did not cause her death, that I think are of note.
The two substances are both prescribed to treat depression, according to medlineplus.gov. One of the drugs is among only two approved by the FDA to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), according to the American Psychological Association.
I often think about what she would have said about this story, if she had had an opportunity to do so. I regret not having found her sooner and telling her that her life matters, and not just to me and for this story, but that her life mattered period.
I wish she were still here.
Part Three: Retaliation, Intimidation, and counter-intelligence
D&E’s alleged abusive behavior is in part protected by a deliberate strategy of intimidation, surveillance, and harassment of their former models and anyone who criticizes them publicly.
Bailey Rae
Beginning in June 2021, or about eight years after her scene, Rae began sending emails to various sites that were hosting her scene. She explained to multiple websites that she had been high on heroin at the time her video was filmed.
On June 15, 2021, Rae emailed an address operated by D&E Media. This email address is one that I am certain Vollenweider had personal access to. I know this because we used to correspond by email and it is the same email address he used.
Rae wrote to them: “I did a facial abuse seen [sic] when I was much younger under the name Bailey Rae, my real name is [withheld]. Look I was on drugs when I shot that video because I was in active addiction, and I have been clean now for years with a nice normal life and now this video popped up and it’s very embarrassing and it tearing up my relationship with my boyfriend. Anyway please take it down. Thank you.”
On July 4, 2021, or 19 days after her email to Vollenweider, Rae was contacted on Facebook by an account using the name “Hannah Avramut”. The character appeared sympathetic, and told her that many of D&E’s models end their own lives.
Rae told Avramut much of what she had told me: that she had been on drugs at the time of filming and that she had cut herself and attempted to end her life. She also notes that she had recently been in contact with sites hosting the video.
The two communicated back and forth for several weeks. On October 16, 2021, Rae asked Avramut for an update. Avramut answered: “Hey, I couldn’t answer you anymore. There is a problem with your story, you say you were given drugs before the shooting, but now they say it was your drugs.”
Rae responded that shifting the blame for purchasing the heroin to her functioned as a confession that they had known she was on drugs at the time of filming. Avramut then deleted that message, and Rae retained screenshots of both the message and the message-delete notification. Hannah Avramut’s name then switches to “Facebook User” indicating that she either deleted her account or blocked Rae.
Rae believes that the account was operated by someone affiliated with the studio, and this seems likely. The timeline is suspect and it is consistent with a pattern of behavior that will become clear.
It seems likely that the purpose of this exercise was to gather what Rae believed about the scene, explore what she would be willing to tell a stranger, feed her potential disinformation about D&E to muddy the waters, and undermine her trust in potential good actors.
This last potential motivation, to discourage her from trusting strangers, is critical. The process for approaching these models is extraordinarily awkward and delicate. I often spent days using open source methods to track down their contact information, many of whom took evident steps to conceal it. I then call them cold, introduce myself as a reporter, and ask to speak with the model using their legal name about one of the most traumatic experiences of their life.
It is startling to be contacted by a stranger who knows your phone number and legal name, and who asks to discuss a sensitive and embarrassing moment from your past. I often took an hour or longer to rehearse the introductions to these calls.
This practice is one that is highly dependent on the model’s faith in humanity. She must be capable of believing that there are strangers who might call her out of the blue to offer help.
Several times in my interview with Rae she commented to the effect “I hope you are who you say you are.” I found this odd, and eventually asked why she kept expressing concern that I might not be acting in good faith. Only then did she open up about the Avramut episode.
This continued surveillance of former models under a fake identity, clumsy though it was, has a strategic purpose. This purpose will become clearer with more examples.
Myself
Over the course of my reporting, Vollenweider and/or agents of D&E published the street address of my mother at least twice, published two defamatory blogs about me, bought the rights to my domain name, changed Vollenweider’s profile picture on Twitter to a picture of me for weeks, and extended multiple bribe attempts of varying subtlety to me.
Doxing My Mom
Vollenweider published my mom’s street address along with the first names of my mom and older sister on a forum for adult content. The first instance was called to my attention in September 2022. It has since been taken down.
FA also worked my mom’s street address, town of residence, and a nearby body of water, into the text description of one scene. This paragraph of text is still visible if one clicks on the scene on the FA website. It also references a disparaging nickname that Vollenweider used to call me. I cannot share this description or even the nickname without further exposing my mom’s address.
To my knowledge, he has never published my street address.
Defamatory Statements Made About Me
D&E has purchased the rights to paulmulholland.com and published a fake blog about me there.
The blog is entitled “Pseudo Journo Has His Cover Blown” and reads: “Fake Journalist befriending models claiming to ‘help’ them but it seems like he’s really trying to pull a “Girls Do Porn” with their personal info. Sex workers should use caution when talking with him, especially relating to any past / present work.”
The phrase “Girls Do Porn” is a reference to a porn website that was shut down for sex trafficking in part for misrepresenting the distribution of the scenes they produced. I am honestly not sure what “pull a ‘Girls Do Porn’ with their personal info” is supposed to mean in this context.
This website once featured a picture of my face, but has been taken down.
The domain name was purchased April 22, 2022. Paulmulholland.net and paulmulholland.org were purchased the same day but have not been developed as of publication. Paulmulholland.edu remains open for the time being.
The purpose of this fake blog is to discredit me and make it harder to earn the trust of my sources. It explicitly warns models against speaking with me. A former porn director for an unrelated studio who I spoke with said paulmulholland.com was the first site that came up when he googled “Paul Mulholland journalist porn.”
Recall that this was also the purpose of “Avramut” contacting Rae, and that it almost worked.
D&E maintains at least one more semi-active fake blog called facialabused.com in which the author pretends to be a feminist activist “exposing” FA. Based on the tone and substance of the articles written on this site over the years, I am all but certain that Vollenweider writes them himself.
The purpose of the facialabused.com blog has evolved over time and most of the old blog posts have been removed. Today, if you visit the site, you will see a blog post entitled “Beware of These Two Fake Journalists.” The blog is about me and an amateur researcher named Alex Barber who has assisted me in the past.
The earliest dated posts on both sites, in their current form as of publication, are from July 19, 2022. This suggests that the author for both blogs was the same person.
The blog makes a number of defamatory statements about me. Among other things, they say I am a “porn addict” and that I am “an employee of facial abuse with nefarious purposes.”
Accusing me of working for FA is clearly false and intended to damage my credibility and discourage potential sources from speaking with me. Speaking of me, the blog says “he will cause you harm and will document anything and everything you say.”
The blog also suggests that I was a participant in the J6 Riot at the Capitol Building. I was present there, but in my capacity as a video journalist: “He pretends he is a journalist and was at the Jan 6th rally pretending to ‘document’ it, but we all know why he was there.”
Ford Fischer, a highly regarded journalist and documentarian, and the man who owns the rights to my footage from the J6 Riot offered this statement in my defense: “Paul Mulholland is a freelance and independent journalist who I’ve now hired for my news site, News2Share, several times. I’ve also acquired some of his past works, including his full library of footage from January 6. Like myself and many other reporters that day, Paul filmed the action close up, and was present for no other reason than essential journalism that continues to inform audiences to this day.”
Asserting that I am employed by D&E is the most flagrantly defamatory claim they have made about me. I have never been employed by D&E in any capacity, and I actually turned down more than one offer of employment.
Bribe Attempts
In September 2021, Vollenweider extended two subtle offers of employment to me.
On September 28, 2021, Vollenweider asked whether I could assist him in producing pornographic films of higher production value: “For production I’d want multiple camera angles and some decent acting.”
He was aware by this time that I had experience with video and audio editing and in filming in a journalistic context (though it was grossly inadequate to produce a film).
He explained that he wanted “a more female centric site” which he described as “more high class stuff.” He added, “That’s where my lack of skills become a problem. I want to run an idea by you.” I invited him to text me instead of asking by Twitter DM, and that is where the conversation ends.
On September 29, 2021, Vollenweider asked me if I would write promotional blogs for him. He asked “You ever consider doing blog posts? I need a good writer. I’m worn out. I write the same shit. I suck.” He explained that these blogs would serve as promotional materials for D&E’s output.
I considered both of these questions to be tests to see if I could be bribed. I have never received or accepted any money from D&E for any purpose.
Felicity Feline
The full extent of D&E’s petty retaliation and harassment reaches its zenith in the case of Felicity Feline (legal name withheld). Felicity performed in two scenes for FA in 2015, and a third for the now defunct site called “Sperm Suckers” which was also produced by D&E.
In 2020, Felicity published a YouTube video entitled “Think Twice Before Doing Abusive Adult Work.” In the video, she explains that she regrets having shot with FA and wishes she had never done it. She told me that her experience with D&E caused her mental health to reach “a low point” and “I thought about killing myself.”
She explains in the YouTube video that she filmed with FA in East Orange, NJ, where many of their shoots have taken place and where their administrative offices are (unless they have moved them recently).
Felicity says that after her second shoot with FA, Vollenweider offered to make her a pay-site because her videos had been very successful. This site would be a subscription site oriented around Felicity and they would share the profits 50/50. Vollenweider would provide the production equipment and handle the back-end.
The full deal for setting up the site included Felicity performing oral sex on Vollenweider, she told me. Felicity says she did so, and is beyond embarrassed that she did. She said “I was very naïve” and “he seemed like he cared about me.” Felicity said she felt manipulated and disgusted with herself.
Felicity signaled initial interest in this deal, but later backed out of it. Felicity said that Vollenweider was offended by this and “I can’t believe how aggressive he got about it.”
Felicity then explained that Vollenweider bought and kept the rights to felicityfeline.com anyway, and made a fake blog about her there too.
This fake blog is different from the one made in my honor in some significant ways. The blog is written in Felicity’s persona, meaning its text is presented as if written by her, and contains quotes attributed to her such as “I’m Felicity Feline and I enjoy when men completely dominate me as they force their hard cocks down my throat.”
Felicity once summed up D&E’s content: They present “women as disgusting creatures that we should step on.”
She went on to explain that Vollenweider tried to blackmail her using the site. When Felicity asked him to take the site down, she says he responded that he would return the domain if she would represent FA at Exxxotica expos and “make it seem like everything is cool.”
Vollenweider also asked her to perform another scene for FA in exchange for taking down the site. Felicity says that Vollenweider wanted her “to work for Facial Abuse again for free.”
She said in the video that “I was basically at the point where this guy is blackmailing me,” a characterization that she stands by today.
He also asked her if she would have sex with a dog for money, Felicity says.
Felicity rejected this offer. She told me that Vollenweider somehow had access to a German Shepherd who had been trained to have sex with women, or at least that he claimed to. She emphasized multiple times how disgusted she was by this.
Felicity went on to repeat these accusations in another YouTube video published in August 2022 entitled “Stop Abusive Porn! Shut Down Facial Abuse Website!”
She provided me text message conversations that she had with Vollenweider, also from August 2022, where she directly accuses him of asking her to have sex with a dog. Vollenweider responded “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
In this exchange, Felicity offers to take down her YouTube videos if Vollenweider would take down the fake blog. Vollenweider agreed if Felicity would issue a public apology, which she refused to do.
Additionally, Vollenweider never denied that he is operating a fake blog in Felicity’s name. He acknowledges that he owns the domain, and suggests his motive for doing so: “I bought lights, camera, and a laptop and the domain for the project we had agreed to do. You reneged. You’re [sic] right to do so but I purchased the domain.”
Felicity had previously explained to me that Vollenweider was mostly just annoyed that Felicity backed out of the website agreement.
The felicityfeline.com site has been updated over the years. In June 2022, a pre-shoot interview with Felicity was posted on it, and it remains there as of publication. The pre-shoot interview was recorded immediately before Felicity’s second scene with FA and appears to be a conversation that she had with Hooligan, the same FA director from Rae’s scene, in which they discuss expectations and methods of consent withdrawal.
I am not sure what the exact motivation for this was, but Vollenweider seemed to believe that this pre-shoot interview would be devastating to Felicity’s account and to my reporting, telling me by text in August 2022, “Sorry that killed your narrative.”
As it happens, this video did precisely nothing to undermine anything that Felicity had ever told me, and actually revealed some additional information that is inconvenient for D&E.
For one, this was the pre-shoot interview for her second scene, and not her first. So when Felicity told me that she was initially unprepared for the intensity of verbal abuse (recall that Rachel said the same), she is not contradicted by a video showing her being warned before her second video.
The video also shows the director explaining safe words and methods of consent withdrawal to Felicity. My other sources insist this was not standard practice across the life of FA and Felicity’s first pre-shoot interview is conspicuously absent. Felicity also believes that D&E always treated her better than other models because of her economic value to them.
Felicity told me that publishing the interview misses the point. She explained to me that she is annoyed about what happened after the scene: the fake site, the black mail, and the offer to have sex with a dog. She says that “I knew what I was getting myself into” and never indicated to me that she felt she had been assaulted on set. Notice that Felicity is not in the sexual violence section of this article.
This pre-shoot video actually does more damage to Vollenweider and D&E than anyone else. For one, it confirms that they maintain records of pre-shoot interviews, which makes Vollenweider’s refusal to provide any to me that much more dubious.
Secondly, the director speaking in the interview indicates that a tap on the leg would signal an immediate stop. This is important because Vollenweider once told me that tapping the male’s leg meant that the male model has to stop within “2–3 seconds.” At a minimum, this interview reveals an inconsistent application and explanation of consent withdrawal methods from model to model. Recall that Clayra and Anna both understood that a thigh tap signaled an immediate stop.
Lastly, Hooligan tells Felicity to avoid words like “stop” or “don’t” and instead stick to “break” and “timeout.” He said that he would stop if she says stop for “legal reasons.” This practice of stopping for any word or phrase that might signal a withdrawal of consent, even when it is not a designated safe word, is conspicuously absent from Rachel’s scene.
As of publishing, felicityfeline.com is still up and operational. Felicity told me that “I am fucking sick of it” and described Vollenweider as an “online menace.”
I asked Smith what he thought of Felicity’s situation. He says that bartering a domain name is not necessarily coercive, unless there was a threat to expose her to hatred, ridicule, contempt, or embarrassment, whether or not the statements on the site are true.
When I explained to Smith that Felicity is humiliated by the website and that Vollenweider is aware that it bothers her, he says in that “it is arguable” that it could be coercion.
Today, Felicity makes a living as a nutritionist, yoga instructor, and OnlyFans model. She enjoys drumming and plays in a band, and says she wants the domain taken down so she can move on with her life and put FA behind her.
Part Four: Disinformation and Confusion
Other fake blogs are maintained by D&E which are designed to confuse and distract investigations. I have identified at least two, those being shutdownabuseporn.org and abuseisnotporn.org.
These blogs are written in the same tone and persona as those written on Facialabused.com and paulmulholland.com, that being a leftist who is concerned about the content produced by D&E.
Abuseisnotporn.org is rather flagrant, and actually links to several websites produced by D&E and contains short clips of D&E content embedded in the article.
Shutdownabuseporn.org is more subtle, and actually contains real information about the studio, such as one of the male performer’s legal name. Before I encountered abuseisnotporn.org, I noticed an email address on shutdownabuseporn.org called abuseisnotporn@gmail.com and I emailed it on February 2, 2021.
Vollenweider became aware that I was investigating him in February 2021. I know this because he changed his Twitter profile picture to a picture of me, which I noticed on February 9, seven days after I sent that email.
Vollenweider had insisted to me that he discovered my investigation because “many” of his former models had told him about me contacting them: “How I became aware of you you [sic] is you asking my former models. Many of them just felt you out and sent me what you said. Audio/txt. You’re intentions are not pure and from a point of integrity. They are agenda driven.”
This is certainly a lie, because by the point Vollenweider became aware of my reporting in early February 2021, I had only contacted one model (it was Felicity) and not “many.”
The reason Vollenweider would try to construct such a clumsy lie was likely to reduce my faith in my sources, similar to how the point of his fake blogs about me are designed to reduce my sources’ faith in me.
It is all but certain that Vollenweider simply had access to the email address named after a website that I now know D&E operates. I believe the purpose of this website is to bait journalists and other researchers into tipping their hand so that D&E can surveil, harass, and intimidate them. Like how they began doing to me immediately after I emailed the site.
There is one more fake blog that D&E is behind, facialabused.wordpress.com, not to be confused with facialabused.com, the blog that stated that I work for FA. I know all the fake blogs are confusing, but that is probably the point, to create an information environment that is difficult to navigate.
Or as Vollenweider explained to me on May 1, 2022 “You have to ask yourself how much information is out there that I’ve purposefully seeded in the hopes that someone cites it as fact.”
Vollenweider actually acknowledged to me that he operated the WordPress site himself in January 2022, and then the site immediately went private, though the Wayback Machine archives for the site can be found here.
The purpose of this disinformation, as Vollenweider suggests, is to blend real information with fake, in the hope that a reporter “cites it as fact.” This would have the effect of discrediting everything in that reporter’s work, and not just some of it.
The WordPress blog, for example, used to contain articles that made bold accusations against some of the men who work at D&E. I cite none of them here as fact, since they are unreliable. One interesting one though, was a blog dated April 7, 2017 (as archived on October 26, 2020) which claimed that Ernie Rossi, the recruiter for D&E, “Gets some models drugged up. Has sex with them afterward” among other accusations.
This one caught my attention because Rae actually accused D&E of doing this, though not Rossi specifically. This article was taken down by September 24, 2021, because on the archived version of the website from that day, it is absent.
Recall that Rae had emailed D&E in June 2021 claiming that she was high on heroin at the time of her shoot. It appears likely that this post was taken down because D&E originally believed it was false and might lead a reporter on a wild goose chase. Once they suspected that it might be a real lead, they removed it. The timeline is too suspect, and the other blogs from this time period were not removed along with it.
The point of these blogs is to waste reporters’ time, not to give them a real lead.
The extent to which D&E produces fake media to distract and confuse is actually impressive in its scale, though not in its sophistication. There are many other instances that I could expound on, such as weird emails I have received from random people offering me “dossiers” of information that I already knew was false, to random forum posts doing the same, but I am unable to prove their association with D&E.
Many of these unsolicited tips and related material claimed that anyone who died after shooting with D&E died by suicide attributable to a scene performed with them. But a quick fact-checking revealed that some had died of accidents or medical emergencies, and sometimes over a decade later. Of course, merely dying after a scene with D&E does not demonstrate that the scene caused the death. They couldn’t have died before shooting a scene with them after all.
The purpose is to bait a reporter into writing that many women have died by suicide after working for D&E. Once specific cases are proven to be accidental deaths, the true suicides are thrown out as unreliable also, and D&E can claim a clean record. All of this informs my decision to only discuss the one death in which I physically possess the autopsy report.
Recall that “Hannah Avramut” also claimed that many former models die by suicide when she contacted Rae.
If Avramut is indeed a puppet account operated by D&E, then exaggerating the number of suicides caused by the studio is a breathtakingly callous disinformation tactic to employ. This is especially true when it is communicated to someone who had very real and painful thoughts of suicide as a consequence of her video, who actually attempted suicide, and who has been haunted by the video for years.
Part Five: Refused To Offer Substantial Comment
When we were still communicating, Vollenweider frequently accused me of being unfair to him and of being a fake journalist.
I all but begged Vollenweider and his colleagues to comment specifically on this article. I contacted Vollenweider, Rossi, Horter, and Sims repeatedly. I even drove to Vollenweider’s personal residence in New Jersey and knocked on his door to ask for an interview, though he wasn’t home at the time.
I was unable to secure an at length interview with any of them. In effect, they refused to become acquainted with the evidence I have against them and to offer an organized defense against it. I left voicemails on the phone of both Rossi and Vollenweider explaining that I had sources accusing D&E of ignoring their consent. They never responded.
I scoured my text correspondence with Vollenweider and used whatever comments could be used in his defense for this article.
It is hardly possible for someone to have been fairer, to people who deserve it less, than I have been to the folks at D&E.
Vollenweider has likewise declined to provide me extended unedited footage of key scenes despite acknowledging that he maintains such footage and despite its potential to discredit his accusers and my reporting. Vollenweider mocked my request for other pre-shoot interviews in a text that read “Do you want the 12 years of security cam footage too?”
In the alternative, D&E has chosen to spend their time on a campaign of juvenile retaliation directed at their victims and a reporter. This strategy has been effective too. Anna explicitly told me that she feared retaliation from them, and had heard rumors of what had happened to Felicity, and this was her stated reason for wanting to remain anonymous. Most of the women I contacted declined to participate in this story and many even denied their identity to me.
Vollenweider has indicated that he is willing to sue me for defamation regardless of what I write. After I explained to him by text that I could substantiate everything in my article, he responded “Doesn’t mean you won’t have to fend off a suit.”
I trust that the discovery process will validate this account. I welcome the opportunity to litigate the truth-value of my reporting in a public setting and I stand by everything I have written.
For inquiring minds, Segpay processes D&E’s payments.
Questions or comments can be directed to paule.mulholland@gmail.com
EDIT July 10, 2023: A previous version of this article spelled Ernie Rossi’s name as Ernie Rosie. It has been corrected to reflect his last name’s proper spelling. It has also been updated to reflect Rossi’s role as CEO of D&E, as stated in D&E’s copyright complaints.
