Behind the OnlyFans porn boom: allegations of rape, abuse and betrayal
STORY: [ON-SCREEN WARNING:
This video contains graphic language, details and images which some viewers may find distressing.]
ADREIONA: “He took his phone out to record”
SAMMY: “A company saw me being raped.”
FALZONE: “OnlyFans partners directly with people who are breaking the law.”
AMANDA: “Do I need to just strip naked and show you my naked body for you to believe me?”
MICHELSON: “I should have never posted that video”
REPORTER: This is a story about OnlyFans, the popular adults-only website where anyone can sell sexually explicit videos of themselves. But the platform has a darker side. It's been a home to nonconsensual pornography. And in Sammy's case, far worse: a video of her alleged rape.
SAMMY: I met Jean on BLK, which is a dating app.
[DATE: July 13, 2022
VIDEO SOURCE: Miami-Dade Police Dept
CAPTION: Linda So, Reuters]
REPORTER: In April of 2022, Sammy, a college student from Florida, says she started talking to a guy named Jean on a dating app. Jean's real name is Bendjy Charles.
SAMMY: “He called me that night so I could go over to his house and hang out with his friends.”
REPORTER: When she met up with Bendjy and got into his car, she says his friend, Michelson Romelus was in the passenger seat.
SAMMY: “We drive from my house back to Jean’s house. In my head I expected more people. I thought there was just going to be a group of us.”
REPORTER: But when Sammy walked into the apartment, she says no one else was there. She felt uncomfortable, but tried to stay calm. After some drinks and dancing, Sammy says the mood changed and the men grew sexually aggressive.
[DATE: July 13, 2022
VIDEO SOURCE: Miami-Dade Police Dept]
SAMMY: Michelson comes behind me and he tries to penetrate me anally, and I told him to get the fuck off of me. He slaps me in the face. They put me in various positions and took turns. Jean got off of me and I remember just being like I’m done. And I get ready to walk out. I told them to take me to my friend’s job.
DETECTIVE: You get back in the car, and you tell them to take you to your friend’s job? And they take you? And they drop you off?
SAMMY: I let my friend know that I think they were recording me. He goes on Michelson’s profile and finds his… like in the bio, there’s links and one of them was to OnlyFans.
REPORTER: Through a public records request, Reuters was able to obtain screenshots of the alleged rape video that was posted on OnlyFans.
SAMMY: After that happened, I was lost. A company saw me being raped and they made money off of it. They saw me destroyed and they got a check.
REPORTER: A Reuters investigation identified at least 128 cases between 2019 and 2023 in which people complained to U.S. law enforcement agencies that explicit images and videos of themselves ended up on OnlyFans without their consent.
[UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: His OnlyFans page which had explicit photos of myself.]
REPORTER: In response to Reuters’ findings, an OnlyFans spokesperson said that “in the few examples where bad actors have misused our platform,” OnlyFans “removed the content swiftly, banned the user and actively
supported investigations and prosecutions.”
[CAPTION: Amanda Dicrosta, Florida]
AMANDA: "Mike and I had gone back and forth over the months. Trying to rekindle things ... Him and I’d have sex. I noticed one time that he was recording me and I asked him to stop.”
REPORTER: Amanda Dicrosta told police she had no idea her ex-boyfriend was posting their sex videos online. Her ex, Mike McFarland, is a former NFL player for the Indianapolis Colts. The two started dating in 2019 after they met in Florida.
AMANDA: My ex before Mike had, I guess, been like watching us on social media and stuff and found his private Twitter account with the Onlyfans attached to it. I didn’t know what he was talking about so he started sending me screenshots and was like oh you didn’t know about this? I called Mike and he took them down immediately. Didn't give me a hard time about it, so I never went forward to press charges. You know, it was he took them down, no questions asked, cool. I was sitting outside after work one day and I just had like this this light bulb that went off in my head. And I was like, oh, my God, like, what if he posted the videos again? There was all of the old videos from when we were together and then videos that he took of me after we had broken up and we were rekindling things. The second time it was only videos without my face.
REPORTER: Word was getting around among family and friends about how she supposedly was doing porn on OnlyFans.
AMANDA: That was a really hard time in my life. Just so much judgment from people who I thought were different to not even care to hear my side and just assume that now I'm doing porn. It was just, it was, it was really, really degrading. I finally just drove to Tampa, went to the police department. I was just hoping that they would take me seriously, honestly. Of course it's a male cop. Like most of them are. So I'm, again, just taking my sex videos and just showing them to more people for them to turn around and tell me that there's nothing that they can do for me.
REPORTER: According to the police incident report, after investigators consulted with the state attorney’s office, they told Amanda the case could not be prosecuted because the videos did not include information that specifically identified her.
AMANDA: I have every single piece of clothing in the video. I literally have everything to this day, hoping that one day that I can still go to court and say, look, these were my underwear, this was my dress.
[CAPTION: Mary Anne Franks, George Washington Univ. Law School professor]
MARY ANNE FRANKS: When you become a target of this kind of abuse, it is so hard to erase it. it's hard to erase the image itself. It's hard to erase the impact that it has. The ultimate goal should be deterrence. Stop people from doing this to begin with.
REPORTER: To protect herself in the future, Amanda got a tattoo on her backside.
AMANDA: My body is not yours. You don't have a right to a single part of it. Not a video of it, not a picture. That was like my way of helping myself and protecting myself if this were to ever happen again.
[CAPTION: Adreiona Prater, Texas]
ADREIONA: I was a shy person, innocent, most would say. Once I graduated high school, my next step was to go into college. I wanted to be a criminal lawyer.
REPORTER: Adreiona Prater met Anthony Scott while attending college in Texas in July of 2019, and briefly dated him.
ADREIONA: I was at my house one day. I went out to take my trash and he was walking his dog and he saw me and he came and knocked on my door, asked for my number. And from there we started hanging out.
REPORTER: She says that summer, the two became romantically involved and had sex in her apartment.
ADREIONA: He took his phone out to record and I was like, no, no, like, let's not do this. And he's like, I promise, like I’ll delete it afterwards.
REPORTER: But, in fact, he hadn’t deleted the video, she says. Months later, Adreiona discovered Anthony had posted it on OnlyFans and other platforms.
ADREIONA: It was just crazy from that day. A lot of people were contacting me. I stopped going to classes. I just couldn't. I couldn't do it anymore. I felt like my life was over with.
REPORTER: In June of 2022, Anthony pleaded guilty to violating Texas’ revenge porn law and received three years of community supervision. Anthony told Reuters that he didn’t do anything wrong and declined to discuss any other details about the case.
SAMMY: I’ll never give up on music, I’ll never give up on singing, I’ll never give up on writing. Those are the few things that no one can take away from me. [SINGING MIXED IN] Yeah, I chose to be alive after this, but how am I going to do it?
[DATE: July 26, 2022
VIDEO SOURCE: Miami-Dade Police Dept]
DETECTIVE: Pronounce your first name for me?
ROMELUS: Michelson.
DETECTIVE: And your last name?
ROMELUS: Romelus.
DETECTIVE: These are your constitutional rights afforded by the United States of America, ok?
REPORTER: Sammy’s alleged assailants, Michelson Romelus and Bendjy Charles are due to stand trial later this year on charges of sexual battery and distributing obscene material. Both have denied the charges and pleaded not guilty.
DETECTIVE: Do you record, all your sexual...
ROMELUS: Yes, yes sir, like everything.
DETECTIVE: With different females?
ROMELUS: Yes, sir.
DETECTIVE: Do they know they're being recorded?
ROMELUS: Yeah. She knows. Yes, sir.
DETECTIVE: Just something you guys just do?
ROMELUS: Well, me, when I have sex with somebody I always film it. This is like… just a one time experience, so.
DETECTIVE: Like a trophy?
ROMELUS: Uh, basically, but not really.
DETECTIVE: Audio?
DETECTIVE: This young lady ended up in the hospital. Yeah. And she made a police report after she got to the hospital. At no point, she said, did she agree to do any sexual activity with you.
DETECTIVES: Did you know this is on an OnlyFans page? It’s on social media. It’s on social media. That’s how we got it. That’s how we got it.
BENDJY: I didn’t know that.
DETECTIVES: Somebody’s profiting. Somebody’s making money. Off of this.
BENDJY: Michelson. Is it Michelson?
DETECTIVE: There’s only a few ways that video made it to the internet. Your phone, his phone, or a ghost.
REPORTER: Separate from the criminal trial, Sammy is suing her alleged assailants and OnlyFans in federal court.
[CAPTION: Todd Falzone, Sammy’s lawyer]
FALZONE: I'm Todd Falzone. I am a partner at the law firm of Kelley Uustal in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And I represent Sammy in this case. OnlyFans partners directly with people who are breaking the law. There were dollars that went into OnlyFans' account that were profit from a rape video. Sammy's case is one of the first that seeks to hold a company that has clearly profited as a partner with people who are committing these acts of sex trafficking and sexual violence and sexual exploitation.
REPORTER: In response to the lawsuit, OnlyFans’ U.S. subsidiary, Fenix Internet, said it will seek to have the case dismissed. The company says free speech protections shield it from liability for content posted by its users.
SAMMY: I see my story ending, or at least chapter, with everyone being where they belong. That’s my sanity being restored. Those two people being in prison.
ROMELUS: “I should have never posted that video.”
SAMMY: And OnlyFans being held accountable.
