Shocking Details: FL Homeless Men Getting $50 to be Bludgeoned in Fetish Videos

Capitalism or cause for concern?

A Florida film company is being sued after it was discovered that it has been paying local homeless men up to $50 to take part in fettish videos. But these just aren't any fettish videos. In them, the homeless men are repeatedly beaten by attractive women for 12 minutes. The effects are visible. And now, a homeless advocate and some of the men are hoping it stops.

"I'm still in a little bit of pain from a couple of weeks ago," one homeless man in the St. Petersburg area, George Grayson, told the St. Petersburg Times. "I'm just trying to deal with it mentally right now."

Grayson's just one of the men who has taken money -- voluntarily -- to participate in videos produced by the site Shefights.net. After seeing men walking around with black eyes and bruises, local homeless advocate G.W. Rolle started asking why. Here's what he found:

A homeless man, Grayson needed the money.

So he followed the recruiters to a St. Petersburg townhouse on seven different occasions over the last few months, he said, and let five different women use his body and face as a punching bag.

Grayson, 37, became one of many St. Petersburg homeless men allegedly targeted by recruiters from Shefights.net, a locally operated website that sells for as much as $900 videos of scantily clad or semi-nude women beating up men, according to a lawsuit.

[...]

The men say they were offered $25 to be whipped and $50 to be beaten by the women. They were not allowed to fight back, they say, and did not get paid if they quit before the 12 minutes expired.

But the man behind the Shefights.net videos says the men knew what they were getting into when they signed up for what the homeless men have dubbed "beatdowns."

"They've come back many times, which makes it pretty consensual," Jeff Williams, owner of the company, told the Times. Instead, he accused Rolle and others of paying the homeless men for their stories.

"These men are crack addicts and will say anything for money," Williams said.

But Williams main defense may also contain its biggest flaw. If the homeless men will do "anything for money," is paying them $50 to be bludgeoned taking advantage of them?

That's the argument of the Southern Legal Counsel, who has taken up the cause of two of the men. It has filed a suit seeking an injunction to stop the beatings, saying the men were vulnerable and desperate for money.

It may have a point. According to Rolle, the men listed in the suit are mentally challenged. One has "autistic tendencies" while the other has an "extremely low" IQ.

Read more from the St. Petersburg Times.

What do you think?

(H/T: Daily What)