Joe Francis claims ‘Girls Gone Wild’ women ‘victimized’ him: biggest doc revelations
Things got a little too wild.
A new documentary covers the rise and fall of Joe Francis, 51, the disgraced mastermind behind “Girls Gone Wild.”
First created in 1997, “Girls Gone Wild” was an entertainment franchise that caught regular girls acting “wild” on camera at parties, often flashing the camera during college spring breaks.
Now streaming on Peacock, “Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story” uncovers the seedy underside of what was really happening behind the scenes and plumbs the secrets of Francis, who has been arrested several times and served nearly a year in jail.
Francis is also a longtime friend of the Kardashians, has been romantically linked to Tara Reid, and has been photographed partying with celebs such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.
Here are the biggest bombshells.
Francis’ confusing backstory
In the docuseries, Francis, who currently lives on a compound in Mexico and hasn’t been interviewed in years, agreed to talk to journalist Scaachi Koul in an audio-only interview. He relocated to that country after being arrested in 2011 for imprisoning three women at his Hollywood home and assaulting one of them.
His voice can be heard describing a hardscrabble upbringing that led him to a rags-to-riches life.
“I did this all by myself with incredible hard work,” he described his empire.
Francis added, “And it was all methodical. Let me just really take you back. I am a paper boy at like 7 years old. I have been an entrepreneur my whole life, always making money. My dad had a lot of financial problems so I ended up getting a special work permit so I could scoop ice cream.”
Francis claimed he supported his family when he was 13, and bought his first private jet a mere decade later.
However, Koul points out that these alleged “facts” were hard to corroborate and every detail that it’s possible to find about Francis’ childhood points to it being “affluent and pretty comfortable.”
Many of the girls were underage and felt coerced
Danielle, who isn’t identified by a last name, is now a mother of three. She appeared on-screen to reminisce about her time stripping down on camera on the “Girls Gone Wild” bus.
Janet, who also went on the bus and stripped down on camera, recalled, “Whatever they could say, they would say it, to get you on that bus.”
She alleged that the cameramen promised young, insecure girls that they would become famous, everyone would think they were beautiful and booze awaited on the bus.
Danielle recalled, “I remember tripping the entire time I was walking, that’s how intoxicated I was, to this bus.”
Danielle was 18 at the time and did sign a release before filming. She explained that she was naive and didn’t read the paper. “I want to be a part of something that I thought was cool at the time … After we sign, then it got more sexual, like a ‘let’s take your shirt off now’ situation.”
Danielle added, “I felt like what I had to say did not matter. I very much got that vibe from this cameraman. Like, if I didn’t comply, things could go really badly for me.”
Janet recalled that after she was taken on the bus, the doors were shut and locked, and she was taken into the back room where the bed was.
“I remember my older brother was trying to get me off the bus,” said Janet. “And they wouldn’t let him get me off the bus. They locked the door on him.”
Danielle and Janet were both 18 at the time, but some girls were not.
Lori, who wasn’t identified by a last name, appeared topless on a “Girls Gone Wild” tape in 1999, when she was 16. The video spread around her high school, and a teacher asked her to sign a copy of his tape.
“I was so humiliated. I was 16, I was so young,” she recalled.
After she saw the footage, she said, “I was obviously drunk.”
She was so embarrassed that, “I just stopped going to school, I didn’t know what to do.”
Eventually, she got a lawyer who said she was too young to be taped, and she got “a small settlement.”
“But I wasn’t ever after the money, my little tiny 9 seconds of mistake, I wanted it to go away … there are so many girls on that tape that are underage,” she said.
Following a 2003 raid, authorities found footage of at least 30 underage girls on tape for “Girls Gone Wild.”
After that incident, employees got more diligent about documenting themselves checking women’s identification to be sure they were 18 years old before taping them.
On-screen in his audio-only interview, Francis can be heard saying, “I don’t want f–king minors in my s–t. I don’t want to go to jail. Am I totally misunderstood? Absolutely.”
Regarding the “Girls Gone Wild” cameramen who filmed minors, Francis said, “I was the owner of a company. You can’t hold Jeff Bezos responsible for what one of his hundred thousand Amazon delivery guys does. If he pees in someone’s lawn — and that is basically what we are talking about right here.”
A rape allegation
Joe Francis is not currently in jail. At various times, he has been convicted of tax evasion, bribery and false imprisonment, and he has pleaded no contest to child abuse and prostitution.
The documentary covers how a woman identified as Jannel alleged that Francis raped her.
The woman doesn’t appear on-screen, and the account is relayed secondhand. However, Jannel has spoken out about this alleged incident in previous documentaries, such as the 2022 TNT doc “Girls Gone Wild Exposed.”
Text on-screen explains that Jannel filed a police report at the time but didn’t press charges. The doc covers how Francis denied it at the time.
His voice can be heard telling Koul during their interview, “Trust me. By now, there would be so many other girls saying that I raped them, if I had. I have never raped a woman. Ever. Or a man. Or a child.”
In the doc, former “Girls Gone Wild” cameraman Mark Schmitz alleged, “Joe doesn’t have any boundaries whatsoever with anyone, especially with girls. I got him literally on tape lifting a girl’s shirt up. It’s horrible to watch that stuff.”
Francis alleged that he only ever had sex with consenting adult women.
Francis doesn’t feel bad
When asked if he “feels bad” for the underage girls who were inebriated and pressured to film nude scenes, Francis can be heard saying, “No, because I don’t believe they were victimized. They victimized me.”
Francis also said about the lasting cultural impact of “Girls Gone Wild,” that “it loosened everything up. I think it just made for a … more fun generation, I think it created the ability to have, obviously, the Kardashians. And it did so much more. More everything, more for society, for life.”
“Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer”
In leaked audio from a 2005 training session for “Girls Gone Wild” employees, high-ranking employees can be heard instructing fellow employees to capture women on camera in sexually explicit acts.
“We want to avoid what we see a lot of, which is just the camera goes on, the girl flashes the camera, the camera goes off and that’s all we got. We go to the tape and it’s like, ‘That can’t be all we’ve got,’” one man’s voice can be heard saying.
“That’s not what we want,” they added. “We want a longer scene.”
He can be heard instructing employees that if girls are shy or reluctant to strip down or perform sexual acts on camera, “Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Cameramen for “Girls Gone Wild” were also reportedly told to “be aggressive” and “be persistent” if girls were reluctant.
“Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story” is currently streaming on Peacock.
