Case Against Online Modeling Site Involved in Rape to Move Forward

Model Mayhem is an online modeling site used by aspiring models to network, find jobs, and share photographs. It was just ruled that a lawsuit against it and its parent company, Internet Brands, Inc, will be allowed to move forward, after a young woman, Jane Doe, sued the site for negligence.

Jane Doe had been using Model Mayhem for its intended purpose — networking — when she was contacted to travel to Florida for an “audition.” There she met Lavont Flanders Jr. and Emerson Callum who drugged her, raped her, filmed the attack, and put it online, marketing it as “pornography.” Their plan was intrinsically tied to the ability to be able to use Model Mayhem to contact the aspiring models.

Flanders and Callum have since been convicted for their horrendous crimes in Florida court. Both of Miami, they stood trial in 2012. They were each found guilty of a hefty 12 consecutive life sentences for sex trafficking. Five of the victims were involved in Flanders and Callums’ trials, but it’s not clear whether the Jane Doe from the current suit was one of them.

According to Jane Doe’s suit, the site knew about Flander and Callums’ actions since 2010, but failed to disclose or provide any kind of warning to its users. The parent company, Internet Brands Inc, had sued the developers of Model Mayhem for failing to disclose that Flanders and Callums’ actions may lead to civil suits, something Internet Brands, Inc. claims should have been told to them when they purchased Model Mayhem in 2008.

What’s disturbing about that first suit is that Jane Doe was apprehended, sexually assaulted, and filmed in 2011. Which means that the website where her assailants found her knew that there was potential for something like this to happen for months before she was ever contacted. That’s not just terrifying — it’s certainly grounds for Jane Doe to argue negligence. And in the civil suit she filed against Internet Brands, Inc., that’s exactly what she argued.

She filed the suit originally in California, and the suit was dismissed under the Communications Decency Act, which was passed in the late 90s in an attempt to regulate the spread of internet-based pornography. On the most basic level, it attempts to make sure that children don’t see explicit content on the internet by regulating the ways in which sites are allowed to disseminate that kind of content. More relevantly to this case though, is Section 230, which states,

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

In lay terms, what that essentially means is that you can’t be sued if someone uses your website to, for example, distribute pornography.

This was the law that the original court used to overturn Jane Doe’s case. However, in an appeals ruling released this week, the decision was overturned. Judge Richard Clifton, of the Ninth Circuit, decided that Section 230 did not apply. He was part of a three-judge appellate court that decided the case can proceed. Clifton wrote that Jane Doe’s case isn’t barred under the act because,

Jane Doe’s claim is different, however. She does not seek to hold Internet Brands liable as a ‘publisher or speaker’ of content posted on the Model Mayhem website, or for Internet Brands’ failure to remove content posted on the website. Flanders and Callum are not alleged to have posted anything themselves.

The case will move forward, and with good reason. What Internet Brands Inc, did was reprehensible, and Jane Doe paid the price for its mistake. The company deserves to be held accountable, and this case is certain to make waves as it is indeed allowed to move forward.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Chris Jagers via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.