The Madness of Joe Francis: "I thought we were all just having fun. I was wrong." (41 page)

Plaintiff V had been particularly vulnerable to Francis’ charms and had suffered in a unique way. She wasn’t traumatized by a video image that was out in the public, because her footage had been intercepted by authorities and never released. V, however, was traumatized by the
fear
that someone would find out about the footage and about what she’d done.

Because V’s father had been physically abusive to her, and her mother had died about a month before the Girls Gone Wild encounter, she was an “easy target” for Francis and his crew.

Lebowitz said V had struggled with many of Francis’ questions because she believed that he really wanted an answer to them.

“But that isn’t actually what was happening. He was not earnestly seeking the truth in that encounter. He was trying to make his case. I mean, he was engaged in an adversarial process. And even though she knew that intellectually, emotionally when she couldn’t make herself heard, when minor details got picked upon as if the implication being that somehow she was being unclear, it all went right inside and she came away saying, ‘I’m a bad person. I knew I was a bad person, now I’m really a bad person and I need to die.’

“So, I’m not sure if I answered your whole question, but that’s some of what I observed.”

Pontikes asked her to explain the “power differential that Plaintiff V felt in what you observed in this courtroom. How do you think Mr. Francis’ celebrity status and his power play into that power that Plaintiff V feels that he has over her?”

“Just enormously.”

What V was especially upset about were Francis’ questions about why she’d brought him a towel after he forced her to masturbate him.

Lebowitz said V’s concern for Francis after the incident was a sign that Francis had captured her mentally. “His size, his looks, his celebrity status, money, all of those things enhanced his stature to the point where (Plaintiff V) was psychologically captured by him.”

Rachel Seaton-Virga leaned toward Gerard and, in a whisper, said, “I bet she says something about Stockholm Syndrome next.”

“You know, we see it when people are literally taken hostage, as in the Stockholm Syndrome,” Lebowitz said.

Seaton-Virga smiled behind her hand and leaned back toward Gerard, “Told you.”

Pontikes asked how V was harmed.

Lebowitz said V was traumatized by the fear that people would find out what had happened, would then reject her and she would live her life alone.

“It led her to cling to the man that she was involved with at that time for fear that she couldn’t imagine that anybody else would ever accept her.”

That’s why the breakup and attempted suicide were Girls Gone Wild’s fault.

According to Lebowitz, all of the girls could benefit from consistent, long term counseling. But it would be bad to put a timeframe on that counseling. It should be for as long as the girls needed it to be.

Lebowitz then began to talk about how the girls would benefit from a verdict that included significant amount of money for punitive damages.

“They all wish that they could prevent other people from being harmed. They all, like all victims of all kinds of interpersonal traumas, they long for some kind of measure of justice.

“The problem with being exploited or taken advantage of or diminished is it makes you feel small. It makes you feel less than. What justice does is it, you know, it’s a moment in which, you know, in which the community basically says to the victim, ‘To the best of our ability, we’re going to give you back some of what was taken from you because we agree that a wrong was committed. And we’re going to try to restore something to you symbolically.’

“But, you know, he can’t be shut down and he’s not going to apologize. So, in the absence of that, you know, the closest they get to justice is the hope that money could draw some kind of boundary on his bullying behavior. You know, bullies will bully until somebody stops them. Being forced to pay for what you’ve done is, you know, a potential border. It signifies to them that somebody in the community agrees that a wrong has been done and that amends should be made. So, psychologically, I think it would mean a lot to them.

“You know, one of the things that they all experienced is the sense of being cast out and thrown away.”

Seaton-Virga stood, “Judge, I would like to object to narrative.”

Overruled.

Lebowitz, who had stopped speaking but stayed in the same position, as if someone had a hit a pause button, resumed as if Seaton-Virga had never spoken. “And one of the things that I believe all victims who have been interpersonally injured need is some kind of path back into the human, into society, back into the human fold, some sense that they are welcome back.

“So when, you know, the community in whatever way is possible says, ‘You know what, we agree that was wrong, that shouldn’t have happened and we’re going to put something behind it to really, to really represent our belief that, you know, teenagers and girls should not be exploited in these ways.’ It’s kind of like saying to the victims, ‘You can come back now, you know. We see that injustice was done and we’re going to extend a hand that leaves you more included and less cast out.’ Yeah.”

Pontikes asked her why this wasn’t a case about rewarding the girls for “bad behavior.”

Lebowitz crossed her arms as if the question was personally insulting.

“If you want to call what they did bad behavior, which I will argue with in a moment, but if you want to call what they did bad behavior I think they’ve been adequately punished for it and then some.

“You know, in terms of rewarding bad behavior, my understanding, you know, and I don’t have independent knowledge of this, but my understanding is that, you know, Mr. Francis made, through his company, made $17 million on the release of these videos.”

Seaton-Virga stood, causing Lebowitz to pause again, and said, “Judge, again, I object to foundation and hearsay.”

Overruled.

“Now that’s a reward for bad behavior,” Lebowitz continued. “Also, in terms of it being bad behavior, I mean I think the way I think about it is that, you know, you know, they made the, you know, they were young and they were manipulated. And within that vortex of vulnerability they made a mistake. They did something they regretted, that’s all.

“In the litany of things that human beings do to each other that constitutes bad behavior that’s pretty low down on my list. And if I compare that to having a professional commitment to mainstreaming pornography into popular culture, to trying to make the degradation of young women so normal that it becomes increasingly difficult even to figure out what you’re supposed to do. I mean, when I think about a life enterprise that consists of waking up in the morning and seeing how many girls you can get to do something they really don’t want to do and how much you can lower the bar, I actually think that’s bad behavior.”

.

Chapter 47

Medical Records

R
achel and Gerard Virga stayed seated at the defense table after Pontikes ended her questioning of Lebowitz. They huddled over one of four white jacketed binders, each about three inches thick. Rachel took an extra second, then took the binder and approached the podium.

Gerard had prepared two sets of questions for her. Rachel’s cross-examination would hinge on whether Lebowitz admitted reading the medical records and using them in forming her opinion. She said under direct examination that her methodology was simply to talk to her subjects.

Seaton-Virga approached the podium and told Lebowitz good afternoon.

“You don’t like Joe Francis or Girls Gone Wild, do you?”

“I don’t.”

“You find it personally offensive, don’t you, to women such as yourself?”

“I don’t feel personally at risk.”

“I didn’t ask if you felt at risk, I asked …”

“Do I find it offensive?”

“…if you find it personally offensive.”

“I do.”

“You come into it with certain perceptions that may affect your ability to render an unbiased medical opinion in this case?”

“I actually came into this case with no opinion.”

“OK. Let’s talk about the basis of your opinion. You’ve reviewed all of the evidence in this case?”

“I’ve reviewed the evidence available to me.”

“What evidence was available to you?”

“Medical records.”

“So you’re familiar with the medical records of these victims,” Rachel said, waving at the thick binders on the table in front of Gerard. “You’ve reviewed the records on some of these involuntary commitments?”

“Yes I have.”

“Have you also reviewed their previous testimony in the form of deposition testimony?”

“I have.”

“You’ve reviewed hundreds of pages of documentation?” Rachel gave a small laugh, like they were sharing a joke.

“Yeah.”

“Right here I have four binders with what I believe is, at best, the majority of their testimony and medical history. You’ve reviewed at least that much?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s talk about what you didn’t mention to the jury when you reviewed their medical documents. Let’s start with … why don’t you tell the jury what bipolar disorder is.”

Lebowitz went into a description of a disorder that is characterized by drastic emotional highs and lows.

When Plaintiff B was institutionalized in March of 2004 she was having a nervous breakdown, Lebowitz said, and was ultimately diagnosed as bipolar.

“When she was admitted, she was having grandiose delusions?”

“Yes.”

“Hallucinations? She said she was seeing ghosts and dead people?”

“Yes.”

She said she was a designer for Guess Jeans?

“She told a variety of bizarre and delusional things. The evidence is pretty clear that she was psychotic.”

What is psychotic?

“When you’ve really broken with reality.”

Lebowitz said Plaintiff B was acting, in common terms, “crazy, and what we used to call a ‘nervous breakdown.’”

“Actually, you called it a nervous breakdown today. So what is the clinical term for it? You said you used to call it a nervous breakdown. So what do we call it these days? Is it a psychotic episode?”

“A brief psychotic episode is a formal diagnosis. I didn’t, you know, diagnose her at that time. Nervous breakdown is just sort of a colloquial phrase that captures a gamut of a sort of psychiatric collapse. That’s just being the broadest possible term.”

Lebowitz said that while others had diagnosed B as bipolar, which is characterized by periods of mania punctuated with poor-decision making, she did not believe that B was bipolar.

“When people don’t know somebody’s been traumatized, which happens all the time because people are ashamed or they don’t think to say or people don’t think to ask, then this sort of florid disorder is often thought to be something else and bipolar is one of the things that people have historically been misdiagnosed with,” Lebowitz said. “That said, I do think she was psychotic at the time.”

“Are you suggesting,” Seaton-Virga began, “that the other doctors, the numerous other doctors who have previously diagnosed her as bipolar are incorrect and that it was in fact this traumatic incident that is masquerading as bipolar disorder?”

“I didn’t interview her at the time so I can’t, you know, retrospectively diagnose her.”

But two things made her think that B was not bipolar. The first was the “historical fact that people are diagnosed with all sorts of things when trauma is kind of the unrecognized core.”

B also hadn’t showed any signs of bipolar in years.

Seaton-Virga turned to a tabbed page in her binder. B was hospitalized for a month and during that time, she spoke with numerous mental health professionals.

“Licensed professionals, I’m sure, doctors and, perhaps not of your caliber but certainly capable of making these determinations, and is there anywhere in those doctors’ notes where she indicated anything about Girls Gone Wild or any sort of trauma related to Girls Gone Wild or Joe Francis?”

“I agree with you,” Lebowitz said. “People don’t talk about what they’re ashamed of.”

“Right. Not until they’re suing someone.”

The comment came out a little sharper than Seaton-Virga intended and actually drew a gasp from one of the jurors.

Jury, meet Rachel Seaton-Virga
, I thought with a smile.

Pontikes objected, but Lebowitz answered anyway.

“No, that’s not actually true. People don’t talk about what they’re ashamed of until all sorts of things happen: they think that they might get a sympathetic hearing; they feel like the shame has devastated their life for so long that they’re like, you know, they can make a different step.”

Lebowitz said she’d treated military veterans who didn’t disclose their deepest shame until 10, 20, 30 years after the fact.

Seaton-Virga leafed through the binder on the podium. “When she met with a counselor she seemed to focus on the death of her father.”

Lebowitz said mental health services at hospitals were primarily concerned with prescribing the right drugs to suppress the problem and send the patient out the door. There was little effort, she said, to get to the root of the problem.

“Saying that her father died is a non-shaming non-humiliating way to account for some of the stress.”

But, Seaton-Virga persisted, when B’s mother met with these counselors during one of B’s commitments, she didn’t say anything about GGW either. The mother, who by this time knew about the filming, told the counselors that her husband’s death was probably the primary cause of B’s breakdown.

B’s mother was experiencing the same shame her daughter was, Lebowitz said. It was more salient for her to say her husband’s death was the cause of her daughter’s breakdown, instead of the girl’s participation in a pornographic film.

How long did you examine B?

“I met with her twice and spoke with her on the phone.”

“Can you estimate a total amount of time?”

Fourteen to 20 hours.

And in 14 to 20 hours, you were able to get her to open up to you where the other professionals had failed?