News Update (film at 11)

[sdcrdcf!stephen@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU]

Three in Traci Lords Sex Film Case Indicted

Los Angeles Times, Friday 3/6/87

Sex film star Traci Lords' agent and two producers who allegedly
propelled her to blue movie fame at the age of 16 were indicted by a
federal grand jury in Los Angeles on Thursday in the first prosecution
against commercial film producers under federal child pornography laws.

James Marvin Souter Jr., 47, the man who allegedly hired Lords through
his World Modeling Agency in 1984 for the film, "Those Young Girls,"
is charged with producers Ronald Rene Kantor, 40, and Rupert Sebastian
Macnee, 39, with violating the federal law prohibiting the use of
minors in sexually explicit films.

The indictment is likely to be the first of several against producers
of the more than 70 hard-core films in which Nora Kuzma a teen-ager
who migrated to Los Angeles from a small town in Ohio, won national
attention as Traci Lords, U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner told a news conference.

While the current multiagency investigation is directed primarily at
producers and distributors of films in which Lords appeared, federal
authorities also confirmed that they are looking into Penthouse
magazine's use of Lords' photograph as its centerfold in September, 1984.

"This indictment reflects our determination to vigorously enforce the
law that prohibits the use of minors in hard-core pornographic films;
films that show minors engaged in sexual acts," Bonner said.  "We hop
that the message will go out loud and clear to the pornographic film
industry that if they do use minors in their productions, they will be
prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

The three men face a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine
if convicted.

Lords, now 18, who, "in the broadest sense ... was unquestionably a
victim," will not be charged, Bonner said.

....

"Traci Lords made scores and scores of films and videotapes ina a
short period of time.  And if one looks at her films, her photographs,
or talks to people who knew her, nobody would have had any doubt that
she was not what she purported to be," said John Weston, attorney for
the defendents.

Lords produced identification from the state Department of Motor
Vehicles indicationg that she was 20 at the time of the filming, the
lawyer said.

....

Weston also questioned the federal government's decision to prosecute
his clients when no indictment had been returned against the
publishers of Penthouse.

"Surely, the government had people either formally or informally
looking at Traci Lords' centerfold," he said.  "... If the government
was not stimulated to go investigate [Penthouse] because of the age of
this person, it seems very highly unfair to at this juncture smugly
indict people for allegedly being just as fooled as the government was."



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