Sammy remembers nearly every detail of the night in April 2022 when she says two men raped her.
The Miami apartment, stark and empty, where it happened. The loud music as she screamed and told them to stop. The fear and the pain, the overwhelming sense of powerlessness.
Sammy, recalling the night in an interview, also remembers seeing a phone perched on a dresser and thinking: Am I being filmed?
Two months later, on June 30, an edited recording of Sammy鈥檚 alleged assault was posted on OnlyFans, a website where people can create porn and charge for it. The video was marketed by one of her alleged assailants as 鈥渢rain鈥 sex, jargon for multiple men having sex with one woman, according to screenshots obtained by Reuters.
One of Sammy鈥檚 alleged rapists sold a video of the incident on OnlyFans.鈥淭rain鈥 sex is jargon for multiple men having sex with one woman.
"The full train video is here guys,鈥 he said on OnlyFans. 鈥淲ho wants it?鈥
OnlyFans is an adults-only website where anyone 鈥 celebrities, porn stars, cash-strapped moms and aspiring influencers 鈥 can sell sexually explicit videos of themselves. Top earners make millions of dollars a year. Created in 2016, OnlyFans now boasts almost 240 million users and has achieved mainstream fame. Beyoncé namechecked it in a song lyric. Rapper Iggy Azalea said it had brought her a small fortune.
But other people have reaped pain, not profit. They describe lives upended after sexually explicit content featuring them was posted and sold on OnlyFans without their consent. Some videos, like Sammy鈥檚, involve alleged sexual assault. Law enforcement has struggled to monitor such nonconsensual pornography on the website, while victims often have limited legal recourse.
OnlyFans says it is building 鈥渢he safest social media platform in the world.鈥 But a Reuters investigation identified 128 cases in which women and men complained to U.S. law enforcement agencies that sexual content featuring them ended up on OnlyFans without their permission 鈥 and was often sold for profit 鈥 between January 2019 and November 2023.
Under public records laws, Reuters sought documents on cases involving OnlyFans from more than 250 of the largest law enforcement agencies in the United States 鈥 the platform鈥檚 biggest market. Fifty-six of them produced records in which people complained of explicit, nonconsensual posts on OnlyFans. Reuters also interviewed police officers, prosecutors, legal experts and nine people who said their sexual images appeared without their consent.
Most of the 128 police complaints were lodged by women against men who were former sex partners. They often said the content was produced consensually but was posted without their permission 鈥 or even their knowledge. In about 40 per cent of the complaints, the videos also appeared on other popular social media sites, usually as snippets to promote lengthier and more explicit material for sale on OnlyFans.
The cases highlight how technology has transformed modern relationships and the porn industry. Today, anyone with a cellphone and an internet connection can make and distribute sexual videos and images. Filming and sharing these is now an accepted part of many intimate encounters 鈥 so long as it鈥檚 a lovers鈥 secret. Posting those videos online, however, can feel like a major betrayal. It can also be illegal.
Some women said their unwanted appearance on OnlyFans had nearly destroyed their lives.
鈥淎 whole company has made money off of my biggest trauma,鈥 said Sammy, 21, in her first public comments on the case. She requested that her full name be withheld.
In Texas, a woman described being forced to install a home security system after being harassed by stalkers who saw an OnlyFans video of her that went viral. A Nebraska woman said she struggled to go out in public, terrified that people might recognize her from a sex video her ex-boyfriend was selling on OnlyFans for US$15. An Illinois woman said she learned that naked images of herself were circulating from her teenage daughter, who saw them online.
In response to a detailed account of Reuters鈥 findings, an OnlyFans spokesperson said that 鈥渋n the few examples where bad actors have misused our platform,鈥 OnlyFans 鈥渞emoved the content swiftly, banned the user and actively supported investigations and prosecutions.鈥
Sammy, a college student from Florida, has filed the first lawsuit under U.S. federal sex-trafficking laws against OnlyFans.
The spokesperson said OnlyFans had reviewed the cases of Sammy and others described in this report and found that those accounts were deleted either by OnlyFans moderators or the creators themselves. Those deletions sometimes occurred a year or longer after women complained to police, a Reuters review of police records and account information from OnlyFans found.
The spokesperson didn鈥檛 elaborate on the cases but said OnlyFans tightened its consent verification procedures in late 2022. The company requires 鈥減roof of identification and consent from all individuals featured in any explicit content uploaded to our platform, and we moderate all uploaded content,鈥 she said.
She declined to respond to questions about how explicit content of non-consenting adults could have ended up on the site when OnlyFans says it moderates everything.
Combining social media glamor and the business of sex, OnlyFans casts itself as a new breed of adult website. Most big porn sites offer content for free and make money mainly from advertising. At OnlyFans, revenue is generated by its 3.2 million creators, most of them amateurs. They sell content to their subscribers, or 鈥渇ans,鈥 usually for a monthly fee of between US$4.99 and US$50. One-off sales of videos and images through the site鈥檚 direct-messaging function can be even more lucrative.
The terms are attractive for OnlyFans creators: They keep 80 per cent of their fans鈥 payments. For OnlyFans, which takes the rest, it鈥檚 a goldmine. According to the most recent filing by its British parent company, Fenix International, OnlyFans鈥 pre-tax profit in 2022 reached US$525 million 鈥 almost a hundred-fold increase in just three years. Revenue expanded at least twenty-fold to more than US$1 billion.
OnlyFans doesn鈥檛 know how many of its creators are making 鈥渁dult content,鈥 the spokesperson has said. The platform says it also features sports, music and other non-explicit material.
Beyond the United States, OnlyFans has also seen explosive growth 鈥 along with allegations of abuse against celebrities and other content creators.
In Australia, a Queensland man faces trial after being accused of filming himself raping his unconscious girlfriend in 2021 and uploading the video to OnlyFans, according to court records. The man hasn鈥檛 entered a plea, a court official said. In Thailand, a married couple was arrested in October on suspicion of drugging and raping four women and a 17-year-old girl, then selling videos of the acts on OnlyFans, Thai police said. The couple hasn鈥檛 entered a plea but denied the rape charges, police said.
In Romania, former kickboxer Andrew Tate is awaiting trial on rape and sex-trafficking charges connected to running an operation that allegedly forced women to create porn for OnlyFans, said Romanian prosecutors. Tate denies the charges.
In Britain, Stephen Bear, a former reality show contestant, was sentenced in March 2022 to 21 months in jail after posting a sex video of his ex-girlfriend on OnlyFans without her permission. Bear, who denied all charges, was released in January after serving half his sentence. He didn鈥檛 respond to a request for comment. Reuters documented another 17 cases in Britain in which people had complained to UK authorities of nonconsensual porn appearing on OnlyFans, according to public records obtained from the country鈥檚 police forces.
Despite the attention generated by high-profile cases, law enforcement officials say the sheer size of OnlyFans and the paywalls surrounding its individual creators have made it nearly impossible to monitor systematically. OnlyFans is largely a black box to outsiders, much less accessible than social media sites like Instagram, X and Facebook.
The paywall 鈥渁bsolutely, unequivocally adds a barrier,鈥 said Joseph Scaramucci, a deputy sheriff in Texas who formerly worked on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security anti-human trafficking task force. Some law enforcement agencies won鈥檛 subscribe to OnlyFans accounts due to budgetary constraints, he said.
There are other reasons perpetrators of nonconsensual porn aren鈥檛 held to account, Reuters found. Some people were reluctant to press charges against former lovers. Police often lack expertise in gathering technical evidence of cyber-crimes or view the cases as low-priority misdemeanors. Women can be hesitant to share explicit images with male police and prosecutors.
No federal law specifically criminalizes nonconsensual porn. It has been prosecuted under federal anti-trafficking statutes in at least three cases 鈥 none of which involved OnlyFans. Complaints typically are handled by local authorities enforcing a patchwork of state laws, and they usually focus on individuals who post abusive content, not on the sites that host it.
OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair has said that 鈥100 percent鈥 of content is reviewed by human moderators aided by artificial intelligence. But the cases documented by Reuters, including the video of Sammy鈥檚 alleged rape, point to significant gaps in this system.
鈥淭he victim is clearly saying no鈥 in the video, said Todd Falzone, a lawyer for Sammy. 鈥淪o if they were really moderating that video, they would have seen and heard that.鈥
Her alleged assailants, Michelson Romelus and Bendjy Charles, face charges of sexual battery and distributing obscene material. They have pleaded not guilty.
Separately, in federal court in Florida, Sammy is suing the two men 鈥 and OnlyFans. Her lawsuit is the first to take on the platform itself under a federal sex-trafficking law that prohibits companies from financially benefiting from commercial sex abuses, according to a Reuters review of court filings and interviews with legal experts.
Sammy鈥檚 sex-trafficking claim is part of a growing number of lawsuits by people who accuse social media sites of profiting from abusive sexual content. The suits could signal a reckoning for OnlyFans and others in the industry, said five lawyers who specialize in porn and sex-trafficking cases.
鈥淭he legal landscape has shifted,鈥 said Julie Dahlstrom, a human trafficking expert at Boston University School of Law. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e seen judges interpreting trafficking laws more expansively,鈥 and 鈥渓awyers and survivors understanding that they can bring those cases.鈥
No face, no case
For some people, the shock of seeing their naked images on OnlyFans was followed by a futile fight for justice.
Amanda Dicrosta鈥檚 battle began in Florida in February 2022, when she walked into the Tampa Police Department to file a sexual cyber-harassment complaint against her ex-boyfriend, Mike McFarland, a former player for the National Football League鈥檚 Indianapolis Colts. 鈥淚 was just hoping that they would take me seriously,鈥 she said.
The two had dated for about a year and then split up. McFarland afterward posted videos of them having sex on his OnlyFans and Twitter accounts without her permission, she told police.
Dicrosta, 28, told police that McFarland recorded some of the sex videos without her knowledge or consent. She knew other videos existed but said the couple had an understanding that those were private.
When Dicrosta first learned in June 2020 that McFarland, 32, had posted the videos on OnlyFans, she confronted him, and he initially took down the videos, she wrote in a sworn police statement. But in August 2021, when she revisited McFarland鈥檚 OnlyFans account, she discovered not just those videos but also new ones recorded without her knowledge, she told police.
When she saw videos of her advertised on OnlyFans for US$5 each, she felt sick. McFarland had 鈥渆xposed my entire body for $5,鈥 Dicrosta told Reuters. 鈥淚 can鈥檛 even buy a full meal at McDonald's for $5.鈥
Dicrosta said she contacted McFarland again. This time, he refused to take down the videos, she told police.
On Twitter, McFarland posted snippets of the videos with links to his OnlyFans account, according to screenshots Dicrosta provided to Reuters and police. Another ex-boyfriend recognized her body in the videos and shared them with friends, some of whom assumed she was now in the business of 鈥渄oing porn,鈥 she said.
McFarland told police that Dicrosta knew the recordings would be posted on OnlyFans and Twitter. 鈥淚t was with her consent,鈥 he told Reuters. 鈥淚 have nothing to lie about.鈥
X, as Twitter has been renamed, declined to comment on Dicrosta鈥檚 case but said it works to limit sensitive adult content from being shared.
After consulting with the state attorney鈥檚 office, police told Dicrosta the case couldn鈥檛 be prosecuted. The videos showed her private parts, underwear and a bathing suit 鈥 but not her face. For the case to proceed in court, the police report said, the videos had to include information that more specifically identified her.
Police closed Discrosta鈥檚 case in July 2022 and told her they鈥檇 reopen it if she located any such videos.
鈥淚 felt hopeless,鈥 she said. 鈥淒o I just need to strip naked and show you my naked body for you to believe me? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to prove to you that this is me?鈥
To violate Florida law, explicit images shared nonconsensually must contain 鈥減ersonal identification information,鈥 such as unique physical attributes.
Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the George Washington University Law School in Washington D.C., studies the issue of nonconsensual porn and is familiar with Florida鈥檚 law. After reviewing Dicrosta鈥檚 case at Reuters鈥 request, she said the case could have been prosecuted because there was enough context of Dicrosta in the video to allow someone 鈥 in this case, a former boyfriend 鈥 to recognize her.
The case speaks to a broader problem, Franks said: Not all police departments are familiar with the nuances of laws on nonconsensual porn, especially as some laws are relatively new.
A Tampa police spokesperson said that detectives 鈥渄edicated over five months to the investigation,鈥 but the evidence did 鈥渘ot meet the criteria to establish a criminal violation.鈥
Dicrosta felt angry and let down. She thought about the 鈥減ersonal identification information鈥 demanded by Florida law and came up with another way to protect herself in case a sexual partner secretly filmed her in the future.
She walked into a tattoo parlor and had the words 鈥渘ot yours鈥 etched on her backside.
Barriers to prosecution
Dicrosta鈥檚 experience illustrates the long odds of holding people who post nonconsensual porn to account.
Of the 128 U.S. cases Reuters documented, only 28 ended in an arrest and eight resulted in any sort of criminal conviction. Three people went to jail - two for 48 hours each.
Police closed 90 of the cases, including nine for lack of evidence, 12 because investigative leads were exhausted, and 10 because the accusers decided not to pursue charges. The other 38 remained open, including 15 cases marked as 鈥渋nactive.鈥
Police documented some cases for 鈥渋nformational purposes only鈥 when the accusers didn鈥檛 want to pursue charges but wanted a record of the incident.
Forty-eight states, Washington D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico have criminalized nonconsensual porn in the past two decades. But many laws have loopholes or are weakly enforced, according to lawyers, academics and victim advocates. Repeated efforts by the U.S. Congress to pass federal laws that criminalize nonconsensual porn have failed, largely due to objections by free-speech advocates.
Thirty-eight states classify the sharing of nonconsensual porn as misdemeanors, a low-priority crime for some police departments. Some investigators blame the victims for allowing themselves to be filmed, said Franks, the law professor.
鈥淭here鈥檚 not much sympathy for victims to begin with,鈥 she said.
Many of the state laws now used to fight nonconsensual porn are designed to combat 鈥渞evenge porn,鈥 in which someone posts explicit images to retaliate against a former partner. But in the OnlyFans cases documented by Reuters, the motive often isn鈥檛 just retribution. It鈥檚 money.
That鈥檚 a barrier to prosecutions in some jurisdictions.
In Florida鈥檚 Okaloosa County, a man contacted the sheriff鈥檚 office in September 2022 after discovering his ex-girlfriend posted a sex video of them on OnlyFans without his permission. Under Florida law, however, the video must be published with intent to cause 鈥渟ubstantial emotional distress.鈥
鈥淎lthough the victim expressed emotional distress, the intent of the suspect was financial gain, and therefore the elements of this crime have not been met,鈥 the investigating detective said in the case report, which redacted the man鈥檚 name.
Police dropped the case.
'It never ends'
Many OnlyFans creators rely on other social media to promote their content to potential subscribers. Some videos on OnlyFans are published or leaked on other porn sites. And some are disseminated so widely that victims are powerless to stop them.
Adreiona Prater said she was caught in a viral nightmare.
Prater was 18 when a sex video of her appeared on OnlyFans and other websites. She was attending junior college, studying criminal justice, in Tyler, Texas, in July 2019, when she met and briefly dated Anthony Reshon Scott, then 20.
Prater said she reluctantly allowed Scott to record them having sex but afterward asked him to delete the video. Scott assured her he did, she told police.
In February 2020, Prater discovered the video on Pornhub, another big porn site, and contacted Tyler police. She said she dropped the case after Scott promised to take the video down, but later discovered it on OnlyFans. She watched helplessly as it took off on social media.
On Oct. 6, 2020, a clip appeared on Scott鈥檚 Twitter account, revealing her face and naked body, police records show. The caption read, 鈥淐heck out my onlyfans with over 200+ girls,鈥 and provided a link to Scott鈥檚 OnlyFans page. An eight-minute version was also posted to Reddit by an anonymous user, watermarked with the address of Scott鈥檚 OnlyFans account.
In comments under the Reddit post, someone identified Prater by posting her social media information, according to screenshots she shared with police. On Instagram, one person asked her: 鈥淭hat was you in that onlyfans vid?鈥
After being harassed by online stalkers, Prater said she installed a home security system, changed her phone number and called police again, this time in Arlington, Texas, where she鈥檇 recently moved.
鈥淚 just felt so scared,鈥 she said.
An Arlington police detective investigating Prater鈥檚 report ran into a problem: the OnlyFans paywall. It required a US$5 monthly subscription fee. 鈥淪o I was unable to view the contents,鈥 Detective Jacklyn Donalson wrote in a case report.
Donalson told Reuters she knew from experience that it would be tough to convince her superiors to pay for a porn subscription, especially when there was no guarantee it would provide usable evidence.
鈥淟ike all government agencies, our resources are finite,鈥 said Tim Ciesco, spokesperson for the Arlington Police Department. 鈥淲e have to be strategic about the way we disperse them.鈥
The case might have stalled there. Without a subscription, there鈥檚 almost no public information on OnlyFans accounts available to investigators. Some seek subpoenas to force OnlyFans to disclose account information, but that involves persuading a court that it鈥檚 relevant to an investigation.
In Prater鈥檚 case, however, Donalson said she ultimately was able to document enough evidence of a crime without Scott鈥檚 OnlyFans information because the video appeared on other platforms, including Twitter.
Spokespeople for Reddit and X didn鈥檛 comment on Prater鈥檚 case but said their platforms strictly prohibit nonconsensual porn. Pornhub operator Aylo said it 鈥渆xpeditiously鈥 removed the video when it learned about it.
In August 2021, a Tarrant County grand jury indicted Scott for violating Texas鈥 鈥渞evenge porn鈥 law, a felony. The jury cited his Twitter post that advertised his OnlyFans page.
In a conversation that Prater recorded and submitted to police, Scott told her he would pay her to drop the charges, according to the recording, which Reuters reviewed. This time, Prater refused.
Scott pleaded guilty in June 2022 to publishing intimate visual material without Prater鈥檚 consent, and received three years of community supervision, akin to probation. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 do anything wrong,鈥 Scott said in an interview. 鈥淚 want to leave it at that.鈥
As police investigated her case, Prater wrote to OnlyFans on Feb. 23, 2021, to complain about the video and give them the name of Scott鈥檚 OnlyFans account. The company replied the next day, saying the video would be removed if confirmed to be nonconsensual, according to a screenshot of the message that Prater shared with Reuters.
鈥淲e take all reports of this nature extremely seriously,鈥 a help desk representative wrote to her.
Prater said she never heard from OnlyFans again.
According to OnlyFans, the complaint contained 鈥渘o actionable information.鈥 The company did not elaborate but told Reuters its moderators deactivated the account in April 2022 鈥 more than a year after Prater鈥檚 takedown request.
Versions of the sex video remain online, the OnlyFans watermark still visible.
鈥淚 still get harassed about it to this day,鈥 Prater said. 鈥淚t never ends.鈥
'My heart dropped. It was me'
The surge of pornography unleashed by OnlyFans and other websites in the smartphone era is reminiscent of the 鈥淕olden Age of Porn,鈥 a period in the 1970s and 1980s when another technological advance 鈥 home video players 鈥 brought porn to a much wider audience.
As the porn market expands, turbo-charged by social media, so does the challenge of verifying consent.
OnlyFans鈥 terms of service say creators must have documents to prove the age, identity and consent of other people who appear in their content, unless OnlyFans has already vetted those people as creators too. But multiple creators said in interviews that they have uploaded porn featuring others without providing that proof.
The OnlyFans spokesperson said the company strengthened procedures in late 2022 to require proof of consent before creators could post content on the platform. Yet Reuters found more than a dozen cases filed with U.S. law enforcement agencies in 2023 in which people alleged that explicit videos or images were posted without their consent.
In addition, of the nine people Reuters interviewed who said they were victims of nonconsensual porn, all said they were never asked for documents.
"Even if you have content moderation rules that are fairly clear against nonconsensual intimate images, those rules are abused regularly,鈥 said Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia School of Law professor who has studied online abuse on porn platforms.
While CEO Keily Blair pledges that OnlyFans monitors 100 per cent of content, the terms of service say the company has no obligation to do so: 鈥淲e are not responsible for reviewing or moderating Content.鈥
The company spokesperson didn鈥檛 address the apparent inconsistency but said: 鈥淲e know the legal identity of all our creators and work closely with law enforcement around the world. This approach means OnlyFans is an extremely hostile environment for anyone鈥 seeking to share nonconsensual sexual content, she said.
Some women said they were only able to confirm suspicions or rumors of their appearance on OnlyFans by buying access to images or videos of themselves.
Jennifer Aviles told police she initially heard about the explicit videos of herself from her 15-year-old daughter. The teen discovered Twitter posts by Aviles鈥 ex-boyfriend, William Lewis, that advertised his OnlyFans account with images of her face and body.
鈥淚 got my only fans set up if y鈥檃ll want to see some really GOOD STUFF,鈥 Lewis tweeted on Oct. 18, 2020.
鈥淚 looked at it and my heart dropped. It was me,鈥 Aviles, 40, of Woodstock, Illinois, recalled in an interview.
Aviles knew that explicit images and videos had been taken during their eight-year relationship. 鈥淚 enjoyed being recorded, then watching afterwards,鈥 she said. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 why most people consent to do intimate videos.鈥
But she told police that she had asked Lewis to delete the images after they broke up. 鈥淏eing vulnerable like that involves a lot of trust. Little did I know years later it would haunt me.鈥
Wanting to know exactly what Lewis had posted of her on his OnlyFans page, she paid for a US$50 monthly subscription to his account, she said. She discovered photos and videos of her naked body and of her engaged in sexual acts with Lewis.
Aviles called the Woodstock Police Department.
On Aug. 29, 2021, a detective brought Lewis, 41, to the police station for questioning. During the videotaped interview, which Reuters reviewed, Lewis initially denied posting explicit material of Aviles on OnlyFans or Twitter. Then he said he couldn鈥檛 remember. Then he broke down in tears. 鈥淚鈥檓 hoping this doesn鈥檛 ruin the rest of my life,鈥 he said.
In May 2022, Lewis pleaded guilty to one count of nonconsensual dissemination of a sexual image 鈥 a felony. He received 24 months of probation.
鈥淚 am remorseful,鈥 Lewis told Reuters. 鈥淚 do feel bad about putting it out there into the universe.鈥
OnlyFans confirmed it responded to a police inquiry about Aviles鈥 case in March 2021 and that the account had been deleted the previous November. X didn鈥檛 comment on the case but says it bans non-consensual nudity on the platform.
Far from giving consent, 11 women and five men involved in the cases reviewed by Reuters told police they had no idea that images featured on OnlyFans even existed until after they had been posted. Each said the videos had been recorded without their knowledge.
Taysha Blase, 29, was among them.
The Nebraska woman said she had subscribed to her ex-boyfriend鈥檚 OnlyFans account out of curiosity. What she found distressed her. Her ex, Vincent Tran, 31, sent out a notification in July 2021 offering his OnlyFans subscribers a 47-second sex video of a 鈥淧AWG,鈥 or Phat Ass White Girl, for US$15.
The video showed a distinctive tattoo. Blase said it was hers.
The next morning, Blase contacted the Omaha Police Department. She told Reuters she also submitted an online complaint to OnlyFans about Tran鈥檚 account but never received a response. According to OnlyFans, 鈥渘o actionable information鈥 was provided to the platform at that time.
About a month later, Blase said, she heard from the police that her case would be forwarded to the domestic violence unit. By that time, Tran had taken down the video, but Blase still wanted him charged, fearing the post could resurface, she said.
For months, Blase said, she felt distraught and uncomfortable in public, wondering who might have seen her on OnlyFans. 鈥淔or all I know,鈥 she said, 鈥渢hat person may now know what the most intimate parts of my body look like, and there鈥檚 nothing that I can do about it.鈥
On Dec. 12, 2023 鈥 more than two years after Blase reported the incident to police, and nearly four months after Reuters first inquired about the case 鈥 an arrest warrant was issued for Tran. It alleged he recorded and distributed an intimate video of Blase without her consent 鈥 felonies in Nebraska.
Tran remains at large. Reuters reached him by telephone, however, and asked about the case.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 something I don鈥檛 want to talk about,鈥 he said.
'When I have sex, ... I always film it'
One alleged victim of nonconsensual porn is setting her sights on OnlyFans itself: Sammy, the college student.
Her lawsuit, filed in November 2022 in federal court in southern Florida, isn鈥檛 just about her alleged rape, but also about who profited from it.
It鈥檚 the first of its kind against OnlyFans and tests whether the website is liable under federal statutes designed to protect people from companies that 鈥渒nowingly鈥 benefit from sex trafficking 鈥 defined as commercial sex produced under 鈥渇orce, fraud, or coercion.鈥
鈥淭hose types of claims require that there be a financial benefit to the platform,鈥 said Carrie Goldberg, a New York lawyer specializing in nonconsensual porn cases. 鈥淭here鈥檚 really no easier platform to prove that for than OnlyFans,鈥 she said, because the website takes a 20 per cent cut of every transaction.
Sammy鈥檚 lawsuit cites violations of the same sex-trafficking laws used in a high-profile case against Pornhub. In 2021, its parent company, MindGeek, settled a sex-trafficking lawsuit brought by 50 women who accused the site of hosting nonconsensual porn and sought US$100 million in damages.
The parent company 鈥 now called Aylo Holdings 鈥 said it has comprehensive safety measures to eradicate illegal material.
Sammy鈥檚 case, if successful, could bring similar attention to OnlyFans and its effectiveness in policing millions of creators, four legal experts told Reuters. It could also spur more lawsuits, they said.
OnlyFans did not comment on the experts鈥 assessments.
In a court filing, OnlyFans鈥 U.S. subsidiary, Fenix Internet, said it will seek to have Sammy鈥檚 sex-trafficking case dismissed, citing free-speech protections that shield social media platforms and other websites from liability for content posted by users. If the two men did post the video, they would have violated OnlyFans鈥 terms of service, the company said.
Sammy鈥檚 lawsuit against OnlyFans is on hold pending the outcome of the criminal case against the men, Romelus and Charles.
Reuters couldn鈥檛 access the video of Sammy鈥檚 alleged rape posted on OnlyFans, which her attorney said lasted about 10 minutes. Instead, reporters viewed screenshots and listened to parts of the recording played by Miami-Dade detectives while questioning Romelus and Charles. They also pieced together Sammy鈥檚 story from other law enforcement records and interviews with her.
It was spring break in 2022, when Sammy, a music production student and aspiring singer, met Charles, 24, on a dating app. He invited her to a party at his apartment, she told police and Reuters.
She was excited when Charles picked her up that night with Romelus, 27, in the passenger seat. But when the three arrived at the apartment, no one else was there. After some drinks and dancing, the men grew sexually aggressive, she said.
Their behavior culminated in an attack in the bedroom, where Sammy said she was stripped, slapped, raped and sodomized 鈥 all while a phone recorded her from atop a dresser.
鈥淚 was disoriented, shocked, scared,鈥 she told Reuters. 鈥淚 was just overwhelmed with how powerless I felt.鈥
She gathered her clothes and tried to take refuge in the living room, she said, but was again raped there. She said Romelus stood over her, holding his phone close to his head. At the time, Sammy thought he was on FaceTime, talking to someone, and shielded her face with her hands.
In fact, police said, Romelus was recording.
Afterward, the men took her to the workplace of her friend, Chris Philbert. As he drove her home, she broke down, punching the dashboard and swearing, Sammy and Philbert said in interviews. She opened the car door and tried to hurl herself onto the highway, because it felt 鈥渓ike the moment I鈥檓 supposed to die,鈥 Sammy said. Her friend pulled her back in. 鈥淚t was bad,鈥 Philbert said. 鈥淚t was just a terrible situation.鈥
Later, she checked herself into a hospital, where she called police.
Meanwhile, Philbert, after learning from Sammy that she might have been filmed, found Romelus鈥 OnlyFans page. Using OnlyFans鈥 messaging function, he said he was interested in buying a video of three people having sex, according to screenshots of his chats with Romelus provided to Reuters by the Miami-Dade State Attorney鈥檚 office.
On June 30, Romelus sold Philbert the video for US$20, the screenshots showed. 鈥淢ore good videos coming my boy,鈥 he told Philbert.
Philbert shared the video with investigators, and on July 26, 2022, Miami-Dade police arrested Romelus and Charles. They both denied they had raped Sammy. 鈥淣obody forced her,鈥 Romelus said in a video-recorded interview with two detectives, which Reuters reviewed.
The detectives played the OnlyFans video for Romelus on a phone. 鈥淚n the video she says, 鈥楴o, stop.鈥 Did you hear her?鈥 Detective Nicole Wells said to Romelus. 鈥淪he鈥檚 pushing you off.鈥
Romelus said he thought she was protesting because he was penetrating her too deeply. She knew she was being recorded and consented, he added. 鈥淲hen I have sex with somebody I always film it.鈥
When the detectives played the video for Charles, he said he couldn鈥檛 hear Sammy saying no and didn鈥檛 know the video had been posted on OnlyFans.
It鈥檚 unclear how long OnlyFans hosted the video or how many customers viewed it. Eleven days after it was posted, a lawyer for Sammy emailed police and said she was seeking to have it removed from the site 鈥淎SAP,鈥 according to Miami-Dade Police Department records. The video has since been removed.
According to OnlyFans, it deactivated the account on July 29, 2022 - three days after Romelus' arrest. OnlyFans didn鈥檛 comment further on the case.
The OnlyFans video remains key evidence against the defendants, who are out on bond and due to stand trial later this year. Charles declined to comment, as did the public defender鈥檚 office representing Romelus.
The detectives questioned Romelus for an hour on the day of his arrest, then left him alone in the interview room
A camera in the room continued to record.
He sank his head into his hands and spoke quietly to himself. The man who had filmed Sammy seemed unaware he was now being filmed himself.
鈥淚 should have never posted that video,鈥 Romelus said. 鈥淚鈥檓 so stupid.鈥
(So reported from Miami, Orlando and Mansfield, Texas. Szep reported from Miami and Washington, and Marshall from London. Additional reporting by Luiza Ilie in Bucharest, Byron Kaye in Sydney and Panarat Thepgumpanat in Bangkok. Editing by Julie Marquis)
