PARIS — French prosecutors reportedly asked a judge last week to require 17 men involved in the so-called French Bukkake case to stand trial for rape and other crimes.
A source close to the investigation told French wire service AFP that the charges include “rape, gang rape, organized human trafficking and aggravated pimping” in relation to incidents alleged to have occurred during the production of content for the now-shuttered French Bukkake website.
As XBIZ reported, the men were arrested in 2020 and first indicted in 2021. The accused include producers and male performers.
“It is now up to two judges in charge of the investigation to decide whether the trial goes ahead,” AFP reported.
According to French press reports, such a trial would be the first known instance of performers in France being indicted for rape in the course of investigations involving the adult industry.
Prosecutors, the AFP reported last week, “believe the recruiter lured young, economically vulnerable women into participating in the filming of the videos in the full knowledge that they would be subjected to ‘aggravated rape.’”
Investigators also “believe the women were told the videos would only be accessible on private Canadian websites. In fact, the films were viewable in France and the producers demanded large sums of cash from the women to remove them — only for the images to continue to circulate online. Prosecutors said alcohol and drugs were commonplace during the shoots.”
The women reportedly told prosecutors “that they had not been warned before going on set of the type of sexual acts expected of them. Sexual acts were performed on them without warning, without them being able to comprehend them, and therefore without being able to give their consent.”
A Case Going Back 3 Years
In October 2020, the Paris judiciary opened a preliminary inquest into the French Bukkake operation, which was led by producer and performer Pascal OP. After that, around 50 alleged victims were identified, and their testimonies were investigated by a branch of Paris law enforcement often tasked with fighting cybercrime.
A source from the Paris judiciary told AFP in October 2021 that four individuals were then indicted for rape, of whom three were then put in provisional detention. The fourth performer was freed but placed under “judiciary control.”
Two of the performers questioned at the time by the “judge of instruction” — equivalent to an American district attorney — were identified as Tonio Love and Eddie Blackone.
“Everyone behaved like an ostrich,” performer and producer Nikita Bellucci told AFP at the time about the indictment of the French Bukkake team. “If one works with the intimacy of actresses, with human beings, one needs to pay attention and not just follow orders.”