Shona River went to America to work in porn and ended up, by her account, trafficked by LA Direct, the agency run by Derek Hay.
The mechanism is the thing I want people to understand, because it is not hidden and it is not complicated. Foreign models come into the United States to shoot without work permits. That is already illegal, and it puts the model in a position where she cannot take a problem to anybody, because the first thing that happens if she does is that she gets deported. From that point the agent has her.
Shona describes being introduced to LA Direct by Pierre Woodman. She describes a five year contract. She describes having to live in Derek Hay's house and not being given a key to it. She describes being propositioned by him. Her first paycheque was five hundred dollars. She was not allowed to shoot her own OnlyFans content, and she was introduced to an escort agency called The Luxury Companion.
She went to immigration about it and nothing happened. She also points out that the AVN Awards work as a marketplace where all of this is done in the open, in a ballroom, in front of everybody.
The fix is not complicated either, which is the frustrating part. Enforce work visas for foreign models and most of this stops overnight. Every site hosting the content of a trafficked woman is making money from it, and not one of them is asking the single question that would end it.