PORN, OH SHOOT!
Woman headed to trial after claiming adult films shot in her Martha’s Vineyard rental
A lifelong Martha’s Vineyard resident has an August date in court with Mile High Media — a purveyor of porn — where she’s aiming to make the renters pay dearly for using her home as a backdrop for skin flicks.
The exasperated homeowner, who said in court papers she fixed up her place with “blood, sweat and tears,” was “freaked out” when she discovered adult films were being recorded in her Aquinnah residence.
This week a federal judge in Boston ordered the homeowner’s New Hampshire attorney, John Taylor, to rewrite “vexatious and inappropriate” motions and get them down to under 20 pages. The case, packed with denials and exhibits from photos of dirty underwear to spoiled food, pits a renter against a tenant who turned out to be a porn industry player.
Lawyers on all sides have agreed to keep quiet until the trial starts this summer in Boston federal court, but that hasn’t stopped the flow of court documents to pile up.
Federal Judge Patti Saris stated in a memo Thursday: “No further fact discovery shall take place. No further motions to compel will be permitted.” Any pre-trial settlement, it appears, has failed.
The homeowner, Leah Bassett of Skye Lane in Aquinnah, lives in one of the most bucolic places on Earth, located on the western end of Martha’s Vineyard. Her home, she writes in a court affidavit, has been a “true labor of love.”
Having her artwork as a backdrop for such gay porn films as “Forgive Me Father, Vol. 2” and “Daddy’s Big Boy,” made her stomach turn. She rented the home in the winter of 2014 to 2015, only to discover it became part of the nearly $100 billion global porn industry.
“When I returned to my house … it felt empty, cold and dead,” Bassett wrote in an affidavit. “There were strangers’ belongings hanging in the closets, rotting food left in the kitchen and the visions of what I had seen on the internet popping into my mind at every turn.”
She had educated herself on the pornography being sold using her house as part of the sordid stories. Actors were dressed as priests and others looked like youngsters, court records allege. “Creepier the better,” one entry states.
A total of 18 gay porn or transsensual porn and still photos have been tied to the $1,500-a-month rental, court records state. The homeowner is seeking unspecified damages for copyright infringement (personal art work was in the backdrops) along with consumer law, property rights and emotional distress claims.
New motions are on the way, but this case also appears to be about a island woman seeking her day in court and winning some semblance of revenge with damages.
“All of the joy and warmth that had emanated from this place was gone,” Bassett wrote. “I had no answers and I couldn’t even talk about it with anyone because I was too embarrassed and I had a lot of shame.”
Her affidavit, 25 pages in all, attempts to explain the violation of a paradise lost.
“It was very painful and continues to be painful, as now everyone associates it with pornography,” she adds.
She has hired a Yale University-taught economist to help dive into the books of Mile High Media.
Mile High has objected to the scrubbing of financial documents and accusations the homeowner has made. Other “private information” being sought, the company adds, is “without any justification.”
The next scene, all court arguments point, is before a jury to be seated in South Boston.