ShareThisBy NOLAN CLAY
The Oklahoman
Friday, November 23, 2007
The millionaire founder of "Girls Gone Wild" videos claims he was tortured in an Oklahoma jail this year and that guards there threatened to strap him naked to a chair for 48 hours.
Joe Francis, 34, is now in jail in Reno, Nev., awaiting trial next year on a federal tax evasion charge. He was held in the Grady County jail for two weeks while being moved from a Florida jail to the Nevada jail.
Grady County officials deny the accusations.
"He was quite a character," Sheriff Kieran McMullen said.
The Grady County jail administrator, Shane Wyatt, said, "Mr. Francis was treated like every inmate that comes through the Grady County Law Enforcement Center."
Francis was held in Grady County May 17 through June 4, the jail administrator said.
Francis became wealthy after he began selling his "Girls Gone Wild" videos almost a decade ago.
The videos, and now DVDs, feature predominantly college-age women raising their tops and otherwise exposing themselves, often at spring break locations. Sometimes, the women kiss or engage in sexual activities at the urging of cameramen.
His attorneys allege jailers in Oklahoma tortured Francis, including denying him needed medication and social visits.
"His girlfriend flew to Oklahoma only to stand, under the rain, waving at him from the parking lot," his attorneys wrote.
His attorneys allege on the day he was supposed to be transported to Reno, Grady County guards made him dispose of his commissary - food, clothing and hygiene products - as well as his bedding and blankets for the move.
"While waiting in line to be transported to a bus, one of the guards instructed him to step out of the line. He was told that he would be 'going nowhere' and ordered back to his cell. Francis had already given his entire commissary away and had no bedding or blankets. The commissary could not be replaced for days," his attorneys wrote in one legal filing.
"Mr. Francis again and again begged for a blanket," they wrote in another legal filing. "It was then that guards threatened to strip him and strap him naked to a chair, with only a hole for defecation, for 48 hours. Grady County jail officials were enjoying torturing Mr. Francis so much that, at one point, they even refused to turn him over to the U.S. Marshal."
The sheriff said they do have special chairs "in case somebody's trying to hurt themselves or something but I'm not familiar with him ever being threatened with that."
The jail administrator said Francis was never placed in a restraint chair.
The sheriff said jailers did delay Francis' move to Reno after finding out his family had somehow been notified when he was to be moved.
"That's a security risk," McMullen said. "We don't tell anybody when a prisoner is going to be moved because if somebody knows, who knows what they could set up? ... The transport deputies came to me and told me about it and we pulled him."
The sheriff said federal inmates are not allowed to take commissary with them when they leave. The jail administrator said Francis was never denied a blanket although "we had to take one from him because he was given more than what is allowed."
His attorneys last month made the allegations about the Grady County jail as part of a legal effort to get Francis released on bail in a Florida case. The attorneys declined a request from The Oklahoman to further discuss their allegations.
Attorneys also alleged in legal papers Francis was mistreated in detention in Florida and Atlanta, Ga.
The Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center is a hub for federal inmates in transit. The federal government pays Grady County to hold inmates when the transfer center is full.
Francis faces criminal charges of use of minors in a sexual performance and conspiracy to use minors in a sexual performance after two girls, then 17, were videotaped in 2003 in sex acts in a motel shower.
He denies wrongdoing, saying he cannot be held responsible because the girls lied to a cameraman about their age and because he wasn't in the bathroom at the time.
He had been free on bail in the 2003 criminal case but a federal judge jailed him this year for contempt after he cursed during settlement talks involving a civil lawsuit.
His bail in the 2003 case was revoked because he allegedly took contraband with him into jail in Florida.
He is now in Nevada because he was indicted on a federal tax evasion charge in April.
He has elected to stay in jail in Reno rather than post bail there and be sent back to custody in Florida.
In asking for bail in the Florida case, his attorneys told a judge Francis suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and has become unstable because of his mistreatment while in confinement.
