I am not alone in this.

Sarah Ellis wrote:
I really don't want to post in this thread, but I know I have to. My reluctance is not due to fear of retribution or shame, I am reluctant because I don't have much faith in my ability to change anyone's mind. At the same time, if Iona and others are going to expose themselves to the scrutiny of the MM mod, I want to be with them.

My story is almost exactly like Iona's. I shot with him, hoping to get good commercial images for my book in exchange for doing some art nudes. Late in our conversation he added the double nudes to the trade, and that was fine - I (wrongly) assumed that a professional like him would never do anything to betray my trust. I expected to pose nude with him "in a dance" I did not expect to take me to the middle of the desert, out of cell phone range, to touch me when I asked him not to, to rub his erection on my even as I tried to move away, to humiliate me in front of a police officer, to straddle me naked while I begged him to at least put some underwear on saying "don't worry, I don't want to come in to you", to lecture me about how women love to cry rape for situations that are their fault for the whole trip home and tell me how much success I'd have in modeling if I just stuck with him. I didn't expect any of that.

I'm sure that plenty of you are saying, "Why didn't you run?" "Why didn't you beat up the little 100lbs. freak?" "Why didn't you call the cops?" Why? Don't you think I've asked myself those questions a million time already. I was scarred. I just wanted to get it over with and get back to my hotel and take a long shower. I didn't know what he would do to me if I resisted more than I already was. I still wish I had. If something like this happens to you, I hope you have the guts to fight back, all I could do was get away as soon as I could, go home and warn as many trusted friends as I could.

The worst part of this for me is that it's not the first time I've been in a situation like this. When I was 13 I was molested by a photographer at a commercial shoot. I was with a pretty big agency at the time and I loved what I was doing, but that experience killed it for me. Luckily, that photographer is no longer practicing his craft (and I don't mean photography), but there are so many like him in - successful fashion shooters, GWCs, MUAs, models, all over the business. People can be horrible. They can be so manipulative that they even delude themselves and they can hurt you in ways that can't be predicted and leave no traces. So if you're reading this, please trust your instincts and don't let anyone make you do anything that doesn't feel right. The reward will never be worth the regret.

Thanks for reading this.