Access Goes Behind Bars With ‘Girls Gone Wild’ Founder Joe Francis
It’s tough to feel bad for Joe Francis.
The impresario behind “Girls Gone Wild” has made himself a multi-millionaire by peddling risqué images of young women. Francis’ life went from opulence to incarceration with his arrest on charges of filming underage girls engaged in a sexual act. Francis claims he’s innocent and when Access Hollywood’s Maria Menonous visited him in jail he remained defiant in his defense.
“I have interviewed you before. I have seen your home, I have seen your cars, I have seen the lifestyle that ‘Girls Gone Wild’ has afforded you . . . Now juxtapose that with where you have been for the last few months — it is a pretty extreme difference,” Maria told Joe.
“It is,” he replied. “It’s a hard reality that I am enduring right now, but it is [through] no fault of my own.”
The private planes, luxury cars and hard partying lifestyle bought with Francis’ $100 million “Girls Gone Wild” empire has been reduced to this: A blue prison uniform and a 7×12 foot cement cell.
“I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss my freedom, I miss my life,” Joe said of his thus far, seven-month incarceration. “I am totally embarrassed. I am actually more humiliated now appearing in front of my peers and [a] friend of a mine in jail clothes than I have ever been.”
Launching his “Girls Gone Wild” franchise at only 24, the story of how the now 34-year-old entrepreneur ended up behind bars is a complicated journey.
It stems from a 2003 incident when a “Girls Gone Wild” cameraman unknowingly shot footage of two minors, willing engaging in sexual acts while on spring break in Panama City, Florida.
“These girls have lied about their age,” Francis told Maria.
“To your cameraman?” she asked.
“Not just to my cameraman, on camera,” Joe said. “I have never personally seen this videotape. It was seized the day after it was shot.”
Joe served around 35 days of solitary confinement in Panama City, in connection with a contempt of court charge, stemming from the civil lawsuit involving the underage girls. Upon release he was immediately transferred to the Reno, Nevada jail on separate charges of tax evasion.
Joe revealed to Maria, Reno is paradise in comparison.
“What was [solitary] like for you?” Maria asked Joe.
“I was a wreck. I was a wreck. I mean – a wreck,” he said. “I couldn’t talk without crying because of what they were doing to me.”
Joe said at the Florida jail he was shackled and “cuffed in the shower.”
“What they have done to me is illegal,” he continued. “I am in there, and I have never been to jail before, so I am thinking, to my lawyers, everyone gets chained up in jail in the shower. I am crying, I don’t know why I am hysterically crying all the time.
Joe claims a guard told him that his alleged abuse while incarcerated in Florida was a direct order from Florida officials.
“What did she say exactly?” Maria asked.
“She said, ‘we’ve been told to make your life miserable,’” he answered.
A spokesperson for the jail denies any abuse toward Francis and his time in Florida may be far from over. Joe still has to go on trial in the criminal case involving the underage girls. If convicted on the five felony charges, dropped from an original 71, he could serve up to 45 years.