For well over a decade, Michael James Pratt tried to avoid most of the hundreds of women whom he tricked and coerced into filming his GirlsDoPorn videos in San Diego hotel rooms. When frantic women begged him over the years to take the videos offline, he ignored their pleas. And in the midst of a 2019 civil trial in San Diego Superior Court, he fled the country.

But on Monday, more than three dozen of Pratt’s victims finally had the chance to confront him as U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino sentenced him to 27 years in federal prison on one charge of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and one count of conspiracy to commit the same crime.

Some women cried and talked about still being broken and traumatized by having their videos posted online and shared among family members, friends, coworkers and their college communities. They spoke of having become addicted to drugs or trying to take their own lives. Others spoke about becoming stronger people despite the years of torment by both close associates and online strangers.

“We meet again,” one victim told him. “But this time it’s you who cannot leave.”

Pratt, a 42-year-old New Zealand citizen, admitted in a plea agreement earlier this year that between 2012 and 2019, he conspired to traffic 15 victims, though authorities have said that’s a tiny fraction of the actual victims of the conspiracy. Women who addressed the court Monday said there were more than 450 total victims. More than 120 women have been involved in civil litigation against GirlsDoPorn, its related websites and free pornography sites such as PornHub that hosted GirlsDoPorn clips and generated tens of millions of views.

At least one woman who spoke Monday expressed hope that Pratt could change his life and offered him forgiveness. But most unleashed years of pent-up anger, asking the judge to sentence Pratt to the maximum possible sentence.

Sammartino’s sentence was more than five years longer than what prosecutors recommended and above the high end of the federal sentencing guideline range. A federal probation officer had recommended a 30-year sentence.

The victims told Sammartino that Pratt had destroyed their lives — but also how they overcame the trauma.

“I won,” one woman told Pratt, turning to speak directly to him. “I’m not your victim, I’m your reckoning.”

That woman recounted how in October 2015, she sent him an email demanding that he remove her video from online. She and nearly two dozen other women later sued him in Superior Court.

Pratt’s victims, on Monday and in previous court filings and hearings for co-defendants, have said they suffered relentless torment after online trolls posted their full names and other identifying information online. Many had links or images from the videos emailed to family members, bosses and college administrators. Many spoke of losing careers and lifelong friendships, changing their names and appearances or having to drop out of school or transfer universities. Some talked of using drugs and alcohol to numb themselves and contemplating or attempting suicide.

“The reality is that he lied to these women knowing full well he was going to blow up their lives,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sasha Foster told the judge Monday.

But the victims also talked about banding together to support each other and seek justice, of being survivors and not just victims, of becoming people with desirable traits and strong moral characteristics they described as completely opposite to those possessed by Pratt.

“We are an army of survivors,” said the woman who sent him the 2015 email and later sued him in state court. “And we have won.”

Pratt admitted in his plea agreement that he and those who worked for him recruited young women online from across the country as models, but when they arrived in San Diego, they were pressured to have sex on camera. The women were told the videos would go to private DVD collections overseas, but instead they were widely disseminated on the GirlsDoPorn network of sites and free pornography sites.

A woman identified in the plea agreement as Victim 1 was 18 years old when Pratt admitted that he “rushed (her) through a contract and did not provide her with a copy.” He paid her $2,000 and then ignored her pleas to take the video down when it was posted online nine months later, he admitted.

That woman said in court Monday that she has since graduated from Princeton University, now works in the tech industry and has become a specialist in helping people send takedown notices to websites.

Pratt admitted in the plea agreement that GirlsDoPorn and its related websites netted him millions of dollars in revenue. Prosecutors said Pratt liquidated his assets in 2019 and fled the U.S. At the time, he was in the midst of a civil trial in which a San Diego Superior Court judge eventually awarded nearly $13 million to 22 women who had sued him and several others involved with the GirlsDoPorn site.

Later that year, federal prosecutors unsealed a sprawling indictment with Pratt as the lead defendant. As each of his co-conspirators eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced, Pratt remained an international fugitive.

He was captured in 2022 in Spain just months after the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List, then extradited to the U.S. last year on the same day Sammartino sentenced his childhood friend and co-defendant Matthew Isaac Wolfe to 14 years in prison.

Wolfe admitted to running the day-to-day operations of GirlsDoPorn, managing the finances, marketing the content and serving as cameraman for about 100 videos.

Sammartino sentenced adult-film actor Ruben Andre Garcia to 20 years in prison — a term that Garcia is appealing — and Theodore “Teddy” Gyi, a cameraman who filmed about 120 of the videos, to four years in prison. Valorie Moser, a former bookkeeper, is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.

Pratt’s attorney argued in court Monday and in sentencing documents that Pratt’s only criminal conduct was misrepresenting to women that the videos would not be posted online.

“Had he disclosed that the videos would be posted on the Girls Do Porn website, there would have been no civil case and no criminal case,” his court-appointed defense attorney, Brian White, wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Many of the women who spoke Monday addressed that claim directly, saying they were tricked and coerced from the start and that the deceit went far beyond one lie about where the video would be distributed.

Aside from the main criminal prosecution, the GirlsDoPorn case has spawned several related criminal cases and civil lawsuits.

Alexander Brian Foster, who filmed about 100 GirlsDoPorn videos, was sentenced to one year in federal prison for creating a retaliation video meant to harass the women and lawyers who filed the civil suit in Superior Court.

Douglas “James” Wiederhold, who has been linked in civil litigation to a GirlsDoPorn-style “mom” porn site for women over 30 years old, is awaiting a December sentencing after pleading guilty last year to sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. He admitted to appearing as the male actor in 71 GirlsDoPorn videos and helping convince some women that their videos would not be posted online.

The civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions have also entangled popular free porn sites such as PornHub. In 2023, Pornhub’s parent company agreed to pay more than $1.8 million to resolve a criminal probe alleging it profited from sex trafficking through its hosting of GirlsDoPorn videos.

More than 120 women featured in GirlsDoPorn videos have sued PornHub’s parent company in two lawsuits in San Diego federal court that alleged PornHub illegally published sex-trafficking videos. PornHub’s parent company settled the first of those suits, which involved about 60 women. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The second lawsuit involving 62 women remains active but has been stayed pending this week’s criminal sentencings of Pratt and Moser.

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