Right Answer, Wrong Question.

This article at stltoday.com relates the case of a Missouri woman, identified only as "Jane Doe", who sued MRA Holding LLC and Mantra Films Inc. of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the producers and distributors of the 'Girls Gone Wild' video series.

Miss Doe was at a bar where a Girls Gone Wild cameraman was filming. She was dancing for the camera but had refused, on camera, to show her breasts. Another woman, without asking, pulled Doe's top down and footage of Miss Doe's bare breasts appear in one of the Girls Gone Wild commercial videos. Miss Doe contends that she never gave consent to appear topless, or otherwise, in the video. She did not sign any release forms, did not consent on camera, and in fact refuses to bare her breasts in the video.

An 11 member majority of the Jury decided that Doe had, in fact, consented by being in the bar and by dancing for the photographer. As much as I empathize with Miss Doe over the loss of her dignity, I have to agree with the jury on this decision. All they were asked to do -- and all that was allowed of them -- was to determine if Miss Doe had consented to be filmed. And that was entirely the wrong question for Miss Doe and her Lawyer to have asked.

I am not a Lawyer. I don't know what the statute of limitations is for sexual assult in Missouri, but it appears to me that Miss Doe was sexually assaulted. She was publicly disrobed without her consent. The cameraman was witness to this felonious assault and became an accessory by not interveining on Miss Doe's behalf. He knew from repeated statements she had made that Miss Doe did not want to be topless. But, instead of helping her recover from this uninvited attack, he kept on filming. The company then profited by using the video of the crime.