Exactly 10 years in the past — on Could 5, 2015 — A&E canceled its then-new docuseries 8 Minutes halfway via the primary season, swiftly pulling episodes from its schedule and its web site within the face of backlash.
The present was impressed by a 2013 Los Angeles Occasions article about former law enforcement officials and religion leaders pretending to be prospects lengthy sufficient to rent intercourse employees after which persuade them to step away from that line of labor. Retired Santa Ana Police Officer Kevin Brown was one of many individuals featured in that article and have become the centerpiece of the present. It adopted him as he posed as a consumer to get eight minutes of alone time with intercourse employees, then tried to persuade these employees to depart the commerce, providing assets to begin a brand new life.
Nonetheless, the present was swiftly met with controversy and ended 5 episodes in, with the community shelving the remaining three that had been made.
So the place did all of it go so improper with 8 Minutes? Right here’s a have a look at your entire sordid historical past of this present.
The intercourse employees featured in this system reportedly didn’t obtain the help they had been promised.
In response to intercourse employees who appeared on the sequence, the promise of help after the cameras stopped rolling was all a ruse.
“This present, these individuals, it’s a catastrophe in my life,” 8 Minutes topic Kamylla informed BuzzFeed Information, including that she solely received $200 from being on the present and never the medical, dental, housing, and employment help she was informed she’d get. “I saved on calling them, and nothing occurred.”
Kamylla mentioned she was loath to return to intercourse work after the present — for worry that doing so would make her ineligible for the promised assets. Nonetheless, when she ran out of cash for herself, her husband, and her kids, she needed to return to the commerce. She put up an advert and was then arrested on prostitution fees.
Equally, 8 Minutes topic Gina informed BuzzFeed Information she received $400 from the present — $200 for her look and $50 for every of 4 buddies she referred — however gave up ready for the manufacturing crew to assist her get housing and a automotive. “I’m not gonna beg individuals,” she mentioned. “Y’all mentioned you had been gonna assist. … I didn’t get a f***ing factor.”
One other girl, Donna, informed the positioning she was a former intercourse employee whom producers gave $600 to seem as a present intercourse employee and to have her husband pose as her pimp. She was given the telephone variety of a purported counselor. “I don’t want a therapist, I would like a spot to stay,” she mentioned. “Inside a month, should you can’t do what you mentioned you had been gonna do, we don’t received nothin’ to speak about.”
There have been additionally accusations of exploitation and endangerment to the intercourse employees who had been filmed.
Two weeks earlier than 8 Minutes’ premiere, a set of organizations dedicated to advocacy for intercourse employees and survivors of human trafficking — together with the Intercourse Staff Venture, Freedom Community, Authorized Assist Society, and a number of Intercourse Staff Outreach Venture chapters — wrote to A&E and 8 Minutes producer Tom Forman, requesting a gathering to debate the “troubling” and “unacceptable” sequence and discover a extra accountable alternative.
The signatories of that letter mentioned Brown and 8 Minutes’ ways “mislead the general public and threaten the rights and security of intercourse employees and survivors of human trafficking. As well as, they exploit the lives and pictures of these within the intercourse commerce, thereby exploiting individuals from a marginalized and stigmatized inhabitants.”
Additionally they mentioned the “nonconsensual, filmed eight-minute ‘interventions’” had been ineffective — if not harmful: “Whereas Mr. Brown might have expertise as a vice cop and a pastor, by pretending to be a consumer taken with intercourse and stunning intercourse employees with a filmed intervention, he’s not creating the belief and security wanted for people to make sophisticated life choices. … The choice to interact in intercourse work or to depart intercourse work is advanced and private, and will by no means be used as leisure fodder.” In different phrases, the signatories mentioned, the issues of the intercourse commerce can not and shouldn’t be solved on actuality TV.
In the meantime, greater than 2,300 individuals signed a Change.org petition asking A&E to not air 8 Minutes, calling the present degrading, invasive, and manipulative.
Plus, the present’s narrative was problematic.
As Alana Massey of the Intercourse Staff Outreach Venture of New York Metropolis mentioned in a WNYC interview: “They used phrases like ‘the life’ for everybody who’s collaborating in intercourse work. They use the phrase ‘sufferer’ for each girl that they encounter. They use the time period ‘trafficker’ for people who find themselves presumed to be facilitating prostitution and intercourse work in a manner that’s implied to be very felony and really coercive.”
Massey mentioned calling all girls collaborating in intercourse work “victims” means there’s no differentiation between intercourse work leading to rape and intercourse work involving a consensual change of cash and companies. “Erasing the truth of those variations is actually harmful to people who find themselves victimized,” Massey mentioned, including that there must be a line drawn between anti-prostitution efforts and anti-trafficking efforts.
What 8 Minutes wasn’t doing was acknowledging the systemic challenges these girls face and “acknowledging the humanity and the complexity and the company they do have of their lives, even when a few of that company has been compromised,” Massey mentioned. “On 8 Minutes, [producers] are available with a story, they usually retrofit it to those girls’s lives. And that’s unfair.”
There have been main permissions issues at play, too.
Forman, who’d additionally produced the controversial sequence Child Nation and Intercourse Field, mentioned in an Leisure Weekly interview that the 8 Minutes manufacturing crew requested the intercourse employees for permission to indicate them on display. However Gina informed BuzzFeed Information the manufacturing crew didn’t provide the selection of face-blurring, which she would’ve most popular. A intercourse employee named Jazzy informed the positioning she requested that her face be blurred and it wasn’t. And one named Mya mentioned when she requested face-blurring, the manufacturing crew supplied her extra money. Mya requested for $1,000, they usually supplied her $500 or $600, she mentioned, which she took as a result of she wanted the cash, and “they knew I wanted it.”
The present was finally topic to a lawsuit.
Finally, on Could 5, 2015 — 10 years in the past now — A&E canceled 8 Minutes halfway via the primary season, pulling episodes from its schedule and its web site. Secure Passage OC, the nonprofit group whose work with Brown impressed the L.A. Occasions article that impressed the present, mentioned on Fb it was not affiliated with Brown or 8 Minutes, in keeping with The Washington Submit. Brown and Forman each had no remark for the Submit at the moment, apart from Brown saying he didn’t learn the BuzzFeed Information report.
Later that 12 months, a bunch of girls who appeared on 8 Minutes sued A+E Tv Networks, Relativity Media, and Lengthy Pond Media in district courtroom in Texas, alleging that they solely acquired just a little cash as an alternative of the well being care, employment, and rehabilitation promised to them on the present, per The Wrap. Whereas the present introduced Brown’s encounters with the intercourse employees as surprises, the plaintiffs mentioned they had been contacted days and generally even weeks earlier than filming. Eventually report, the swimsuit had been stayed pending the chapter of Relativity Media, as Selection reported. However the stain on A&E’s fame remained.