Porn shoot led to complaint
Actor was worried about dominatrix’s 15-year-old daughter doing film makeup
By DAVENE JEFFREY Staff Reporter
A teenage girl, years behind in her math education but with an advanced knowledge of S&M paraphernalia, is at the centre of a child protection hearing.
The girl was 15 and living with her mother and two teenage brothers above a sex dungeon in a Dartmouth apartment building late last year when two people called child protection workers to report that the girl was doing makeup for a porn film and was exposed to drugs and living in filth, a family court judge was told Monday.
A young woman testified that she wanted to start a career in porn and contacted the girl’s mother through an online fetish group because she wanted the mother’s help in arranging a film shoot. They met at the mother’s apartment, and the woman could hear sounds from the dungeon below.
"You could hear people beating each other," the young woman said.
The court has been told that the mother says she is not a member of the dungeon club nor does she participate in that kind of activity.
The film was shot one day late last year in the private dungeon. On the day of the shoot, the crew prepared in the mother’s apartment and discussed the film while the daughter did the young woman’s makeup, court has been told.
The girl’s two brothers were also at home that day, playing video games in a bedroom.
The girl did not witness the filming. But after the scenes were finished, the male lead became concerned about the girl’s age. He called Community Services and persuaded his female co-star to do the same, court was told.
The provincial Community Services Department had been involved with the family a few months earlier when the children’s father reported that photos of his daughter on Facebook and MySpace showed her on her hands and knees wearing a dog collar and leash with her mother standing over her.
Child protection worker Christina Shaw investigated and went to the apartment unannounced. She testified that she found whips in the living room, bodices in the bedroom that the girl shared with her mother, and the dog collar and leash from the photos.
She said the mother downplayed the pictures, describing them as funny and saying that "her daughter wanted to be an alternative model."
Ms. Shaw spoke with the daughter, and the girl identified sex toys in the photos as a sex swing and a ball gag. The worker said she was worried about the girl’s sexual and emotional welfare, but the mother appeared to be co-operative and agreed to a plan to get counselling for herself and her children.
But the mother’s therapy sessions didn’t last, psychologist Mary McGrath told the court. During their first two sessions, Ms. McGrath said, the mother appeared open and interested when the counsellor explained how children develop emotionally and sexually and how they can come to normalize deviant sexual behaviour such as sado-masochism. The mother told her she was teaching her children to be tolerant.
The pair did have a third session weeks later, after the mother’s children had been taken from her home. At that meeting, Ms. McGrath said, the mother seemed interested only in "jumping through hoops" required to get her kids back.
The court also heard Monday that the mother has home-schooled her children at times and the daughter is several years behind her peers in math.
The hearing is expected to last most of the week.
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