The Madness of Joe Francis: "I thought we were all just having fun. I was wrong." (37 page)

How did he get you into the room?

“He grabbed our hands and pulled us into the room. He sat on the bed and started to take his pants off. He was taking our hands and rubbing it on his penis.” She mumbled the last word and Pontikes asked her to repeat it.

“Penis,” V said into the microphone.

“And then what happened?”

V just looked at Pontikes with a blank stare and didn’t answer.

“Did it come to a conclusion?” Pontikes asked, attempting to help her out.

“Yes.”

“He ejaculated?”

“Yes.”

“Then what happened?”

“I got him a towel and threw it at him so he could clean himself up.”

He then took out a “wad of money” and tossed it on the bed. She never said she picked any of it up, but apparently $50 found its way into her pocket.

“He asked us if we wanted to go for a ride in his Ferrari and we said yes. We just drove around.”

They then returned to the motel and went around back where a camera crew was waiting. They wanted her to flash.

“I said ‘no.’”

They kept at her and she kept saying no.

“How many times?”

“A lot.”

She had a boyfriend at the time and she didn’t want to be on a video flashing.

Did you tell Joe Francis you were underage before he took you into the bedroom?

Yes, he knew. And she really didn’t want to flash but they kept pestering her and wouldn’t let her leave.

“I felt like it was the only thing I could do to leave, to get out of that situation.”

It didn’t matter that the tape was seized and would never be released. Francis was arrested a few days later and it became common knowledge at school that she’d been involved in the case.

Francis objected and they went to sidebar. Plaintiff V put her cheek in her hand and listened to the conversation without looking in their direction. She rolled her eyes and shook her head as Francis gestured and argued in a strident whisper. But the argument didn’t go his way and Francis backed away from the bench until his back was against the wall. He then slid down until he was squatting on his haunches as Pontikes made her point.

He stood and threw up his hands as the sidebar broke up.

Pontikes asked V what happened with her boyfriend.

He broke up with her and called her disgusting.

“I got really depressed. I took a bunch of painkillers and tried to kill myself.”

She ended up at Bay Behavioral, a treatment center.

“I just didn’t want to live anymore. I didn’t have anybody. I felt disgusting.”

She started drinking and using drugs. The situation with her boyfriend continued to bother her for years. In 2007, four years after the GGW incident, she asked him to meet her so they could talk. She told him the whole story, about how she’d been forced into her actions.

“How did he react?”

“He was really upset.”

And since then, you’ve gained a lot of weight?

“I’m disgusted with myself. I feel dirty and disgusting and just being here right now makes me sick. I’m so depressed, I just let myself go. I don’t care about myself any more.”

She said she also has problems sexually.

“I don’t do anything with the penis. I have flashbacks.”

Her boyfriend broke up with her again, just a week ago, because she was going to trial.

“He said it had been 11 years and it was still in our lives. He called me trash. He said I was disgusting and I shouldn’t be doing this.”

This was the first time, she said, that she’d actually confronted her feelings about her encounter with Joe Francis.

“I’ve denied it for a long time. Now, I have to talk about it. I’ve never really talked about how I feel until today.”

Could you benefit from therapy?

“Yes, a lot.”

Are you doing therapy right now?

“No. I don’t have the money.”

When you and your friends were driving around that day, did you have a “scheme to find GGW and get on GGW?”

No.

Do you have any regrets?

“I wish I had never drove down that road and saw that van.”

.

Chapter 40

“Does that make you a prostitute?”

J
oe Francis was “early” by 90 seconds and he only accomplished that because his consultant, Lisa Dufort, can drive an orange Dodge Grand Caravan like a NASCAR stock car.

He swept into the courtroom and slung his satchel onto the table top. Black pinstripe suit, white shirt open at the collar.

Plaintiff V resumed her seat on the witness stand. She fidgeted slightly, trying to get comfortable around the nervousness.

“Good morning,” Francis said, walking to the podium. He repeated that greeting to the judge and jury before beginning his questioning of V.

“Plaintiff V,” he began slowly, leaning toward the microphone with his hands on the podium and his elbows splayed, “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.”

“What’s my name?”

“Joe Francis.”

“Do you know a woman named Felicia Carr?”

“Yes.”

“Is Felicia Carr in this courtroom?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your relationship with Ms. Carr?”

Objection, outside the scope. Sustained.

“Your honor, how is this not relevant?”

“That was not part of direct examination.”

“I’m allowed to impeach the witness on cross, your honor, if she lied …”

“Your honor,” Pontikes shot up from her chair, “I move to strike those comments.”

“Mr. Francis, that is outside direct. You will not go into it. Members of the jury, you will disregard the statement Mr. Francis just made about a witness lying. It was improper. Mr. Francis, you are instructed that you are not to do that again.”

“All right, but can you tell me specifically what I did so I don’t do it again?”

“Referring to a witness lying.”

“Oh, saying they lied. But if I show that they lied … I got it. I understand. So you’re saying I can’t use the word lie, but I can prove it.”

“I move to strike those comments, your honor,” Pontikes said, rising from her seat again.

“They are stricken and the jury is instructed to disregard this exchange with Mr. Francis.”

“Let me adjust my notes real quick,” Francis said, shuffling papers on the podium. Then he asked V, “Had you heard of Girls Gone Wild prior to 2003?”

“Yes, from friends.”

“Did you have any firsthand personal knowledge of Girls Gone Wild?”

She stared blankly at him. “Firsthand, how do you mean?”

“How do I mean firsthand? Is that your question?”

“Could you repeat the question?”

“You don’t know what the word ‘firsthand’ means or the phrase ‘firsthand?’ Did you have any personal … did you know what it is? Had you seen a Girls Gone Wild television commercial?”

She had.

“What was your personal understanding of what Girls Gone Wild was about?”

She said it was a company that featured girls on videotape.

“Girls doing what?”

She stared blankly at him. “Being on videotape.”

“Doing what?”

Pontikes objected, saying V had answered the question.

“Girls being on videotape is not a sufficient answer, your honor,” Francis protested.

Smoak overruled the objection and told V to try to answer the question.

“What are they doing on these tapes? Being on videotape is why we’re here today.”

Blank stare.

“You’re suing me.”

Objection.

“Mr Francis, come up here.”

Smoak admonished him, again, to ask questions and to make no comments. “Everything you say needs to have a question mark after it.”

“Don’t worry, I have plenty of questions for this witness today,” Francis said back at the podium.

Pontikes objected to that comment and asked that it be stricken.

V was asked again what the videotapes portrayed.

“Basically, women flashing and getting naked,” she finally said.

And you knew this prior to 2003?

“I had seen commercials and have heard about it from friends.”

After a brief sidebar, during which Francis accused Rachael Pontikes of using hand and eye signals to communicate with V, he asked her how many other girls were with her the day she encountered Girls Gone Wild. Four.

“What were their names?”

Objection.

“Why, they’re not under the protective order.”

Sidebar.

Francis went back to the podium and told V that her friends will be known as “Friend 1, Friend 2, Friend 3 and Friend 4.”

“Where you ever, at any time, alone with me?”

Yes.

“When was that?”

“When I was in the bedroom with you.”

Wasn’t there another girl in there too?

She was in the doorway.

“So you were not alone with me ever, is that correct?”

“Not in an enclosed door, no.”

“I’m going to jump back to Girls Gone Wild and that day. When did you hear Girls Gone Wild was in town?”

“I don’t know.”

Francis asked Smoak if he’d be allowed to read something from a police report. Smoak called Francis and Pontikes to a sidebar.

“You want to quote something from a police statement?” Smoak asked Francis.

“No, what I want to say is she just said that – in her Bay County statement she said that her friends and her met at the beach, they heard Girls Gone Wild was in town and they targeted Girls Gone Wild, and this is a huge part of this.”

“She never said she targeted Girls Gone Wild,” Pontikes said.

“You can’t use a police report,” Smoak told Francis.

“What about her own deposition? She said – and her friend said in her deposition …”

“That they targeted – you need to get on to something else. You are not making that an issue in this case,” Smoak said.

“It goes to intentional infliction of emotional distress, because if I intended to do something versus they came to us, they met and they came to us …”

“Doesn’t make any difference.”

“For malice it does, because if you commit malice you’re going after them. They came after us.”

“We’re not going to spend a whole lot of time on that. You can …”

“Fine. I’ll get through that part quick. I’ll get through that part real quick.”

Francis loped back to the podium.

“Is it correct that you and your friends sought out Girls Gone Wild that day at the beach? Weren’t you driving around saying, ‘It would be so cool and fun to be on Girls Gone Wild’?”

At this point, V started to get upset. She said they were driving along Middle Beach Road when her friends, who were dancing and screaming in the back seat, told her to go down to Front Beach Road. When they saw the Girls Gone Wild van, she said, “Yes, I pulled over.”

Didn’t they get together earlier to talk about finding Girls Gone Wild?

“I don’t remember doing that.”

Francis asked her if she met with her friends and discussed looking for Girls Gone Wild that day. Pontikes objected.

“It’s in her deposition your honor,” Francis said.

Smoak sustained the objection, but Francis asked it again. “I want to know the answer to that question.”

“I don’t remember.”

Pontikes objected again, but this time Smoak overruled her.

“You don’t remember? You don’t remember. It’s an answer. You don’t remember?”

“I don’t remember doing that. No, I don’t.”

“Mr. Francis,” Smoak interrupted. “Time out. You are to make no comments about that. You are simply to ask questions. Members of the jury, you will disregard the gratuitous comments made by Mr. Francis.”

“How old was I for this handjob in 2003?” Francis asked V.

Twenty-something.

“I was in my twenties, that’s correct,” Francis said, nodding his head and showing that he was proud that she’d gotten that question right. “And how old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

“And how old did you tell me you were?”

“Sixteen, about to turn 17.”

“Did you at any point tell me you were 18 years old and you were going to college?”

Objection. Sustained.

“Your honor, it’s reasonable …”

“It’s immaterial,” Smoak said sternly, ending the discussion, but not the questions.

“Did you tell me you were in college?”

“No.”

Did you and your friend tell me you had just enrolled in junior college?

“I don’t remember.”

“Take a second, because this is really, really important.”

“Mr. Francis,” Smoak said.

“I just wanted her to think about it.”

“Mr. Francis.”

“All right.”

Turning back to V, Francis asked, “What did you say to me when you first met me?”

“I don’t remember. That was almost 10 years ago.”

“You seemed to have a pretty good memory yesterday when …”

Objection. Sidebar. Plaintiff V sat in the witness box, slumped forward, rolling her eyes and shaking her head at what she overheard.

Francis returned to the podium and asked her again what she said at their first meeting.

“I said I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Do you remember saying, ‘You’re cute.’? Do you remember saying, ‘I saw you on the Maury Povich show last week and you were so cute.’?”

Blank stare.

“Had you seen me on television?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Do you have memory problems?”

Objection. Overruled.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you have memory problems?”

“I don’t know if I ever have. I don’t know.”

“Have you ever had anyone tell you something, maybe the next day, that you did the night before that you didn’t remember?”

“Yes.”

“How often does that happen?”

“I can’t count up the times that I’ve forgotten something. I tend to put things away when things happen. That’s why I don’t remember them.”

How often?

“I don’t know,” she said, appearing frustrated. “How can I count up the times when I haven’t remembered something?”

“I’m gonna jump around a bit,” Francis said, changing tracks.

He asked about how she got into the bedroom with him, was she pulled or coerced?

“Both.”

“I physically pulled you into a room? Show me how I did that.”