Yahoo Lifestyle "Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story" Is Now Streaming, And Here Are The 28 Most Important Things The Second Episode Revealed
Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story is a docuseries streaming on Peacock that explains the rise and phenomenon of Girls Gone Wild, while also unmasking their legal issues and the allegations of abuse they received from women and girls. Below are the most important takeaways from the second episode:
Warning: This post mentions sexual assault.
(And here are the biggest takeaways from the first episode, in case you missed it.)
1.One night, in 2003, during spring break in Panama City Beach, Florida, Girls Gone Wild taped several girls under the age of 18. Three were 17, and one was 16. These girls told their mothers who then met with the mayor directly to inform him about it and ask what he was doing to stop GGW.
2.In the police investigator's interview, one of these girls alleged a GGW cameraman asked them to wash each other in the shower and then play with themselves. She claimed the cameraman kept having to cut the scene because they couldn't do it. She also claimed they were each paid about $100. Another girl claimed Joe Francis, creator of GGW, brought her and another girl into a room and asked them to touch his penis. She claimed he forced them to touch his penis after they refused. She said they were then paid $50 each.
Mark Schmitz, a former GGW cameraman who filmed these scenes, claimed that he didn't know these girls were minors until he got arrested. He claimed that he asked these girls numerous times if they were 18.
Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address the claims.
3.Shortly after, Joe Francis and other members of the GGW crew were arrested, their hotel rooms were raided, and 175 hours of raw footage was seized.
Joe said on the way back from the gym, he pulled into the parking space of a condo and a man who didn't identify himself as a police officer started chasing him. Joe claimed the officer grabbed him and told him he was under arrest, and soon he was in a police car handcuffed.
4.Panama City Beach law enforcement had investigators go through all of this raw footage and were able to identify at least 30 more minors.
5.Joe Francis and GGW cameraman Mark Schmitz were charged with child prostitution and child pornography. They each posted a $50,000 bond and were released from Bay County Jail.
Mark claimed that after he got out of jail, he got a call from Joe where Joe asked him what address Mark was staying at, but not about how he was doing. Mark said Joe had never called him before, so he found this strange and then hung up on him. He claimed this was the last time he ever spoke to Joe.
Mark, who was a young father of two, said it was so hard to process potential life imprisonment that his health immediately took a turn. "I started having, like, the shakes, like, weird shakes and twitches and it turned into, like, blurts. Blurtin' out shit like three, four hundred times a day, like, tourette stuff," he claimed.
6.Joe Francis believes that the underage girls they filmed in Panama City Beach were sent by the police as a setup. When asked if he felt bad for the underage girls, Joe said, "No. Because I don't believe they were victimized. I believe they victimized me." He continued, "They're the ones who victimized us. I believe, and we all believe, that they were put up by the Panama City Police, and it was all an operation. So I believe that was quite orchestrated."
7.When Panama City started investigating Joe, they built it as a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) case which essentially means a prosecutor can argue that they were committing an intersection of crimes.
8.GGW had copies of all the footage seized by the Panama City police and released some of it, marketing the tapes as Girls Gone Wild: The Seized Video.
"Oh, I went for it because I didn't do anything wrong," Joe said. "So as soon as they pop me in Panama City, I took advantage of it, and said, 'Oh, the seized videos, here they are.'"
9.The criminal case against Joe Francis took five years to work through the system, so he returned to Los Angeles in the meantime.
10.Seemingly, Joe's arrest made him more famous. He had proximity to several A-list celebrities of the time and was seen at events with Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and more. He even went on The Tyra Banks Show where he discussed his dating history and mentioned that he and Kourtney Kardashian were friends.
11.Solo, a former GGW production supervisor, claimed that by the time she joined the company, after the Panama City Beach arrests, GGW was very organized when it came to Title 18 compliance. She claimed they had girls sign release forms on camera and checked their IDs on camera to make sure they were over 18.
Cal, a former GGW editor, said, "Every editor always had to sit with an attorney." He claimed they had markers on the footage to reference back to screenshots of women's IDs, so they knew the footage was acceptable to use.
12.According to Joe Francis, legal fees for his various legal troubles cost him $100–$300 million.
13.Solo claimed that Joe hired "hot ass cameramen" because he thought it'd make women more willing to film scenes.
"These guys were not professional cameramen, and so basically, my job on the road with them was making sure they weren't, like, partying too much," Solo said. "I had to make sure they were getting that footage."
14.According to Solo, there were instances where a woman was only willing to do a scene if her friend would do it, too. However, Solo said sometimes a woman's friend would not be attractive enough for the GGW brand. So to get the woman they wanted on camera, GGW would pretend to film her friend, but keep the camera off, and then actually film the woman they wanted.
15.GGW would allegedly coach the women on what to do in scenes. In a recording of GGW production training from 2005, a production supervisor told the crew, "Once you get them into the position where they're gonna do this, you can, like, semi-produce it, like, you know, 'Make sure when you guys get going, you make a lot of noise.' But my thing is, like, the facial shots looking into the camera is, like, the hottest thing ever."
In the recording, the VP of Mantra Films, Joe Francis's production company that distributed GGW, told the crew to try and shoot longer scenes instead of just brief clips of women flashing the camera.
Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address the claims.
16.Three women shared separate stories where they claimed they were taped on the GGW bus performing sex acts they were instructed to do.
Danille, one of the women, claimed she was visibly very intoxicated when GGW approached her at a strip club and invited her and her friend back to their bus. She alleged that once she and her friend were on the bus, the camera filmed them while standing in front of the only exit door on the bus. "He asked us to lick each other's nipples. He asked to, um, shake our butts, and pull our underwear down, even after we expressed we were not willing to pull our underwear down, he proceeded to ask us to do that," she said.
Another one of the women, Jordan, claimed she and her friend were also visibly very drunk when GGW taped them on the bus. "At this point, I just remember, like, the bright lights, and my eyes were just, like, rolling around and we were just, like, slurring our speech and then it turned out to be a pretty explicit sexual scene." She alleged that a couple of times she asked if they could be done with the scene, but that it just kept going.
Janet, another woman, claimed that GGW gave her a vibrator and asked her to play with herself. "Like, I did it, but you could tell at the same time I didn't wanna do it. Like I was being instructed to do something." She also claimed that her brother tried to get her off the bus, but GGW locked the door so that he couldn't get in. She alleged her brother was banging on the door and that she told the crew she should leave and go with her brother, but they told her to stay and then turned up the music to drown out her brother's shouts.
Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address these claims.
17.In a recording from GGW production training, the VP of Mantra Films applauded a cameraman for allegedly pressuring a woman to film a scene even though she was seemingly uncomfortable. "Yeah, let me just talk about that. What we liked. It's certainly the girl that doesn't want to do anything that ended up showing her beaver without even knowing it. That's a wonderful transition, and she's very shy, very nervous, and Mike did a super job, so we want to commend him on that," he said. "And I love to see guys take a girl who wasn't going to do anything, and all of a sudden, gets them to pull down a thing, and 'OK, I'll show you my thong.' And the next thing you know, 'Show me your thong and flash me.' And the next thing you know, now they're kinda loose and the next thing you know, it just goes on and keeps going, you know? Don't take no for an answer."
18.In 2005, the FBI raided the Mantra Films office. Solo claimed that even though GGW only filmed women 18 and older after Panama City Beach, there was a vault in the office that had all of GGW's previous footage. Solo claimed the GGW crew destroyed "any title that was problematic" before the FBI came.
Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address claims.
19.In September 2006, the company and Joe Francis pled guilty to three counts of producing visual depictions of sexually explicit content without keeping records on each performer. The judge imposed a $2.1-million fine and ordered Joe to do 200 hours of community service.
20.Allegedly, Joe sent one of GGW's young cameramen to Florida to do his community service for him. Solo claimed that one day the cameraman told her Joe was sending him to Florida on a private jet, but once he got there, he called and said, "Oh my god, I'm supposed to be doing community service for Joe?"
Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address claims.
21.Some members of the GGW crew said they dreaded when Joe joined them on the road because he acted like a reckless college kid. Solo said, "When he said he was coming on the road, it was like a funeral for us." She added that she and other cameramen would call it "Hurricane Joe." Mark Schmitz claimed Joe didn't have boundaries with anyone on the road, particularly women, and he even has footage of Joe lifting a woman's shirt up.
22.Mark Schmitz also alleged that one time in Panama City Beach, he was on the bus and could hear Joe and a woman in a bedroom in the back of the bus. Mark claimed he heard Joe repeatedly ask this woman to take her shirt off and she refused. Mark alleged that Joe pulled her shirt up, the woman screamed, ran out, and went to the police. The police lined up the GGW crew against the bus, and when they asked who did it, Joe allegedly pointed to the new cameraman who was standing beside him.
Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address the claims.
23.Joe Francis claimed he had sex with some women while filming GGW and that it was all consensual.
24.Amy Wallace, a journalist who was an editor at the Los Angeles Times in 2006, alleged that one of her reporters, Claire Hoffman, was assaulted by Joe Francis. Amy said Claire went to do a business profile on Joe outside of Chicago where GGW was filming. One morning, she called Amy to detail the "bad night" she had with Joe. According to Amy, Claire claimed that while she was reporting the night before, Joe came out of a bus and pinned her against a cop car. Claire claimed that her arms were covered in bruises and that she punched Joe in the face to get him off of her. Claire claimed he kept trying to grab her notebook. Once she got free of him, Joe allegedly came back and whispered, "Baby, give me a kiss," to her.
25.On the night Joe allegedly assaulted Claire, he also allegedly raped a woman named Jannel. According to the Los Angeles Times report, Joe asked Jannel to go to the tour bus, and she told him she was a virgin. In the report, she claimed that after shooting her scene, the cameraman left, and Joe came back and raped her. She also alleged that as he was leaving the bus, Joe said, "She's not a virgin anymore." According to the LA Times, Francis said he didn't remember Jannel and that he didn’t have sex with anyone that night.
Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address claims.
26.After Claire spoke with Jannel and called Joe to get a comment from him, he allegedly screamed at Claire and called her names. Amy claimed that his lawyer then sent an email saying that Joe and Jannel did have sex but that it was consensual. According to the Los Angeles Times report, Joe's lawyer responded to Jannel's accusations saying the sex was consensual and “Though Mr. Francis cannot speak to [Jannel's] discomfort during the encounter, other news stories have commented that Mr. Francis is reputedly well-endowed.”
Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address claims.
27.In 2007, Joe returned to Panama City Beach to face the charges against him. However, it's likely the criminal case ended up getting thrown out because the investigators allegedly mishandled the investigation and the search warrant. The judge had to throw out whatever was found using the search warrant, including the 175 hours of raw footage. The former mayor of Panama City Beach claimed that if this investigation had not been mishandled, it's likely Joe would've been facing decades in prison.
Joe Francis declined an on-camera interview to address the claims.
28.And finally, Joe Francis pleaded no contest to one count of felony child abuse and two counts of misdemeanor prostitution.
Joe explained "I had to plead that because I would not plead to a sexual crime. Because I didn't want to be sexual predator."
You can stream Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story on Peacock.
