With news cameras flashing, adult film performer Cameron Bay told reporters that in her last porn shoot before testing positive for HIV, her partner's penis was bleeding -- and he wasn't wearing a condom.
After stopping momentarily, the cameras continued rolling, she said.
Bay, whose positive HIV test sparked the first of two porn
moratoriums in the last month, spoke Wednesday at a Hollywood press
conference with other adult film performers, including two who said they
also contracted HIV this year. The press conference was coordinated by
the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which advocates for mandatory condom use
in porn.
Five current and former porn performers spoke about the
dangers and uncertainty of life in the adult film industry. While the
performers said they can't be sure when and where they contracted HIV,
they agreed the industry is not adequately protecting its performers.
Choking back tears, Bay continued to describe her last shoot, filmed
at a public bar in San Francisco for Kink.com.
"There were up to
50 people in the room with us. And we were laying on top of them. And
they were touching inappropriately," Bay said. "It all happened so fast.
I didn’t realize how unsafe it was until I saw the pictures ... You're
on a whole other level when you're doing something so extreme."
Last
week, Bay revealed that condoms were available, but not required at the
shoot. She said she didn't think she needed to use a condom because her
male costar had recently tested negative for sexually transmitted
diseases, and she left the choice up to him. Kink.com confirmed to
HuffPost that Bay was offered a condom, but it was not used.
Porn
performer Patrick Stone told reporters he was asked to perform in a
shoot even after he tested positive for HIV. He said he was told he was
HIV-positive in an email on Sept. 10 from Performer Availability
Screening Services, which handles STD testing for the industry. Stone
said he never got a follow-up call or email from PASS, or from his
employer Kink.com, to discuss the results or schedule follow-up testing.
Instead, he got an email from Kink.com two days later inquiring about
scheduling a shoot this week, he said.
Since
then, Stone has taken two additional tests that he said show him as
HIV-negative. He said he's awaiting results from a fourth and final
test.
"It's been kind of a whirlwind week for me emotionally,"
Stone said. "I feel that the testing process for PASS is not working. If
I was allowed to fall through the cracks like I did, who else is out
there?
"I mean, they had me scheduled for a shoot tomorrow and as
far as they knew, I was HIV-positive," Stone said.
Kink.com said
that it did not know about Stone's positive HIV test when it scheduled
him for the shoot.
"He had tested negative for us previously.
Because of the moratorium, tests were not updated on the PASS system for
producers (because no one was cleared for work)," Mike Stabile,
spokesman for Kink.com, said in an email to HuffPost. "He would have
been required [to take] a new test regardless before shooting."
Another
man who identified himself as a porn performer joined the press
conference by phone, saying he wanted to remain anonymous. He claimed to
have contracted HIV working in the industry and tested positive in the
last six months. That would make him the third performer to test
positive for the virus this year.
About two weeks after a shoot,
he said he developed acute symptoms and tested positive. He said he had
tested negative for HIV two weeks earlier.
A fourth performer,
Rod Daily, said he learned he was HIV-positive earlier this month.
Daily, who has been in a romantic relationship with Cameron Bay for
about two years, has performed in gay porn since 2005 and said he always
used condoms.
"That's 12 years that I've shot with HIV-positive
people, used condoms and never been HIV-positive," Daily said. "If
anything, I know that condoms do work. I was a guinea pig for that.
"I
just don’t know how an industry stands here and says they care so much
about their performers and, a week after someone tests positive, they're
out there shooting without condoms," Daily said. "Ultimately, it’s a
business, and their main concern is money and not their performers."
Daily thanked the AIDS Healthcare Foundation "for everything they've
done," including helping him and Bay get medication.
Former
performer Derrick Burts said he became infected with HIV in 2010 working
as a porn performer. Burts said that, like Bay, he had only worked in
the industry for a few months before contracting HIV. In his four-month
porn career, he said, he contracted chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes as
well.
"To me this is one huge flashback," Burts said. "What's the
acceptable number of cases of HIV or herpes or HPV or syphilis or any
other dangerous STD before people step up and do something about this?"
Another former performer, Darren James, who said he became infected
with HIV in 2004 working as a porn performer, said he "almost lost it"
listening to Bay tell her story.
"I didn’t want to see a whole
army of people sitting at this table," said James, who now works for the
AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "This industry has failed and continues to
fail. We all need to wake up."
When Bay found out she had HIV on
Aug. 21, the Free Speech Coalition, which oversees a database of all
adult film performers' STD tests, placed a moratorium on porn shooting.
Six days later, the organization lifted the moratorium.
A week
after porn shooting had resumed, Bay's boyfriend, Daily, announced that
he had tested positive for HIV. Two days after Daily said he was
HIV-positive, another performer, who wasn't identified, tested positive.
That prompted the Free Speech Coalition to impose a second moratorium.
The Free Speech Coalition announced this week that it would lift the
second moratorium on Friday. It also said it will begin requiring STD
testing of performers every 14 days, twice as often as before.
The
Free Speech Coalition maintains that the three performers who recently
tested HIV-positive -- Bay, Daily and the anonymous man -- did not
contract HIV on a film set.
LA voters in November passed a
measure mandating condom use in porn, despite a large, coordinated
campaign against it by the porn industry. Industry insiders say there
has been no enforcement of the new law.
The law was authored by
the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which maintains that no amount of
testing is safe without condom use. "It's like trying to prevent
pregnancy with a pregnancy test," said foundation communications
director Ged Kenslea.
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