Once claimed Paris gave the worst hummer

The 'Girls Gone Wild' maker is found to be in contempt after talks to end a lawsuit fall apart.


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"A federal judge in Panama City, Fla., on Thursday ordered "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis jailed for contempt of court in a civil suit brought by seven young women who claimed the entrepreneur's film crews had placed them in sexually explicit situations.

Francis, the Santa Monica-based multimillionaire who has made a fortune selling risque videos of scantily clad coeds, was ordered by U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak to surrender to court by noon Thursday, but hadn't done so by mid-evening.

Francis told the Associated Press late Thursday that Smoak "had lost his mind."

"This judge has gone as far as to call me the devil and an evildoer," he said. "It is a case of a judge gone wild."

The court order followed a last-minute collapse in settlement talks between Francis' legal team and lawyers for the women, who were filmed on a Florida beach in 2003. The plaintiffs allege that they were "victimized" by Francis' crew by being put in explicit scenes."
LA Times

Who could forget this 2005 Column on Francis....

Eventually, Szyszka says, Francis told the cameraman to leave and pushed her back on the bed, undid his jeans and climbed on top of her. "I told him it hurt, and he kept doing it. And I keep telling him it hurts. I said, 'No' twice in the beginning, and during I started saying, 'Oh, my god, it hurts.' I kept telling him it hurt, but he kept going, and he said he was sorry but kissed me so I wouldn't keep talking."

Afterward, she says, Francis cleaned them both off with a paper towel and told her to get dressed. Then, she says, he opened the door and told the cameraman to come back, saying, "She's not a virgin anymore."

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Six weeks after that night outside Chicago, when I call Francis on his cellphone and ask him about the incident, he says he doesn't remember Szyszka and that he didn't have sex with anyone that night. He seems to lose control, repeatedly referring to me by a crude word for female genitalia. "If you print that, I will [expletive] sue the [expletive] out of you. If you print that, baby, you just put the nail in your own coffin," he tells me. "You are a [expletive expletive]. You decided to blast me . . . You are a [expletive] . . . I will get my last laugh on you. I will get you." He then refers me to Burke, his lawyer.