I am reposting my response to the thread regarding Leon of Mostwam's conviction of a sexual offence against one of his models as the thread is in offtopic and will not be seen by many people.
Frankly, this is the final straw after many years experiencing a culture of misogyny and willingness to protect and support people who abuse and exploit women and models, and accept and encourage the people who think it is okay to trick other people into fulfilling their fetish. I am horrified by the response to this and the continued lack of substantial allyship from other producers and people who have been in this community for a long time. This has severely impacted me emotionally as well as many other models that I have spoken to privately who do not see any point in sharing their opinions because they feel they will be spoken over and ignored.
I have resigned as moderator for UMD and closed my stores due to the way this has been handled. I will not be responding to any comments on this post because I simply do not care enough or make enough money on this site to put myself through any more of this.
Thank you to the people who have spoken up and told people to listen to women and models. Our voices are dismissed and ignored by the people who need to hear them most, and they will only listen to us if another man tells them they should. Being an ally means uplifting marginalised people within your community and I want to acknowledge the small number of men here who have helped reassure me that there may be some hope yet for this space, and let you know that we see it, we appreciate it, and we know that it can be difficult to disagree with your friends and acquaintances and speak up publicly. Please keep doing it. We aren't there yet.



As someone who is a survivor of multiple sexual assaults, reading some of the things the users of UMD have said here has been a shitty experience and makes me feel unwelcome on this site and unsafe continuing to shoot or do sessions.
Whilst I'm not going to say my opinion of guilt because there is very little unbiased information available, I am seeing misinformed claims from people who aren't models, women, survivors or experts in abuse, as far as I know, that I want to challenge.

It seems clear from this thread that even at the stage of someone pleading guilty and getting convicted of assaulting one of us, a substantial number of the users here wouldn't believe us anyway.
Please think about the message you are sending to other models and women here and make a genuine effort to understand why so many of the takes here will make anyone who has been sexually assaulted less likely to return or feel safe sharing any of their experiences.


If you are not a model, you can't know what it's like at a studio, you see the results of a shoot and not the many hours before and after. People experience producers/photographers being creeps at shoots and you'll never realise from the footage you purchase especially if an incident happens after the shoot. We are professionals! I have shot videos on a shitty day, after bad news, after unpleasant experiences, when I'm unwell: nobody has ever picked up on me acting any differently, because either I don't, or I edit it out. Your perception of a day or a working relationship based on a scene you have purchased is not reality.

Yes, models do continue to work with producers who have been accused or convicted of a sexual offence, especially if the producer doesn't tell their models. It is entirely possible that models wouldnt be aware of convictions of sexual offences until the person in question is given advice that they should notify the people they employ.
Once they are aware, they often carry on working there....because this is their job! They may be friends with their colleagues outside as well, but they are there because they are being paid to be - it is work regardless of how easy and fun we make it look.

People who get assaulted at work rarely find that their colleagues quit their jobs or stop working with someone in protest, no matter the industry. When the convicted person is not a colleague on their level, but is their employer, there is a clear power dynamic which also impacts the rate of reporting and the behaviour of the other employees. Models who work at a single studio, don't produce their own content or travel to other studios, and whose income comes from one company are not in the same position as someone who has more power to pick and choose who they work with.

[As an aside, the power dynamic tends to be even more skewed when the employer is 46 years old and the other person is half that age. Young people are easier to exploit at work (why do you think the retail & hospitality sectors love employing teenagers so much? It's not only because they get to pay them less) and often easier to manipulate into not reporting unethical or illegal behaviour from the people who decide if and when they can work.]

Reporting sexual assault is hard. It is harder when you are a sex worker. It is sometimes harder and more traumatic than the incident itself, and I have only managed to find the strength to do it twice in my life despite experiencing many, many more things than this, and neither made it to court. For a case involving a sexual offence to even make it to court, it must already meet a high standard of proof, because councils do not want to waste money pursuing a conviction if it is likely to fail. It is very common for reduced or lighter sentences to be offered for a guilty plea to minimise court costs and emotional distress for the victim (who has already been through an assault and reporting it) by avoiding a long trial.

The risk of publicity is something that would have arguably impacted the model more, who would have been outed as someone who is a fetish model, with her real full name included, putting her safety at risk.
We don't report things that might be scandalous because we don't want our personal information in public so it can be used as another weapon by the people who stalk and harass us already.
The misogyny and vitriol directed at women who do sex work who dare to want to be treated with respect and humanity by tabloids and incels alike is well documented already. She probably would have been dragged through the mud by the media who would have acted like she deserved it for doing fetish work and posted whatever bikini pictures they could find to get more clicks and profit as much as they can from someone else's trauma.

Yes, it is a shame that when people plead guilty and are convicted of sexually assaulting their employee, this often impacts the company's reputation as well as the creations and livelihood of other people in that conpany. That is something that the person who is convicted of a sexual offence is responsible for, and serves as a reminder that when people who plead guilty to and are convicted of a sexual offence, this often has a far reaching and detrimental effect on other people who have done absolutely nothing wrong, and that's just something that person is going to have to live with. If you have an issue with it, don't commit sexual offences, and don't plead guilty to sexual offences that you haven't committed.

However, someone who has plead guilty to a sexual offence against a young women that they employ should not be encouraged to continue employing young women for the sake of being able to carry on watching your favourite porn.
This is genuinely one of the most deranged things I have ever seen someone suggest on umd. I severely question the judgement of those suggesting this and derailing discussion by saying which models should work for their company next?!
There's seperating the art from the artist and there's actively suggesting that someone who has plead guilty to a sexual offence should crack on and get straight back to work. If you're placing your own consumption of a product over the potential safety and well-being of another human being you need to get off the internet and go learn some empathy. For fuck's sake, do better.

I think it is completely inappropriate to, after a case has gone to court and the accused pleads guilty to a sexual offence, subsequently run a second trial over a site the company uses to sell content and is thus populated by the company's customers.
Especially not one in which the person who plead guilty to a sexual offence can spend as long as they like making an argument for their innocence. We have not seen what was said in court. The other person's experience isn't represented in this discussion and there is nobody here advocating for them or sharing their side, but this is obviously an unreasonable and cruel thing to expect someone who has been found in a court of law to have been a victim of a sexual offence.

I was the victim of a sexual offence by my manager when I was 21 years old. Barely any of my colleagues knew but out of the ones that did they continued to work there because they needed a job. The company didn't support me so I quit my job because I could not bear to spend a single day more having to obey the instructions of someone who had done something despicable to me. It meant I spent several months unemployed on top of what I had been through. I did not report it to the police at the time because I was afraid that it would lead to retaliation against my friends who still works there.
When I finally found the strength to report it several years later, I was told by police that it wasn't worth pursuing an investigation and they wouldn't even bother to interview him. My experience is incredibly common, and the reason you don't hear us talk about things like this is because every day we get reminded that even if the court says it happened, the same people who tell us how much they love our work and support us will suddenly say "there's two sides to every story, let me play devil's advocate, I think we should all forgive and forget, we all make mistakes!"

I have already had to take a step back due to recently diagnosed health issues, and having already seen many things over the years that have made me question the ability of this community to take issues like informed consent seriously, I am now considering how much I will be involved in WAM going forward.

I have thought long and hard about this and cannot imagine anything productive or healing for anyone involved in this to come from this thread remaining open. This is not helpful for the model, for Leon, or for the community and nobody here, myself included, is paid enough or equipped enough to lead this discussion in a way that will not cause further harm to the community, anyone involved, or the work of survivors to educate people on what abuse is and how it happens.

If you are a model, performer, or sex worker of any kind (if you're making fetish content you come under the sex worker umbrella) then JOIN THE UNION. Unions are able to guide and support you in your workplace if your working conditions are unfair, unsafe, or abusive. https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/en/sectors/united-sex-workers/

Anyone who has had their boundaries or consent violated by a producer/photographer - my inbox is open. I'm happy to just be a listening ear, help you talk through your options or suggest services that might be able to help with whatever next steps you would find most helpful.

Anyway, I've put too much emotional energy into this already so I'm not going to contribute to this thread any further as an act of radical self care for myself.

Take care. Join your union.