The lawyer for an aspiring model who says she was drugged and raped by a former Miami Beach cop and his friend has filed a sex abuse lawsuit against the two men and the social networking site that allegedly connected her with them.
Attorney Jeffrey Herman was filed the lawsuit Monday against Lavont Flanders, Emerson Callum and blackplanet.com on behalf of the unidentified victim.
Click Here to Read the Lawsuit (PDF)
Calls for comment to Radio One, Inc., which owns blackplanet.com, were not immediately returned Tuesday.
According to Herman, the victim posted modeling photos of herself to her profile on the social networking site to attract the interest of talent scouts and modeling agencies.
But instead of talent scouts, the victim was contacted by Flanders, who Herman said posed as a scout and offered the victim an audition in South Florida.
Herman said the woman was brought to South Florida for the audition, but was drugged and raped. The rape was videotaped and sold for profit, Herman said.
The lawsuit claims the owners of blackplanet.com "knew or should have known of the prevalence of online predators, who would create false identities, present phony opportunities and make false promises in order to deceive blackplanet.com members," Herman said.
Flanders, a Miami Beach cop from 1995 to 1997, and Callum were arrested in August by federal authorities on 22 counts of human trafficking, according to an indictment.
Federal prosecutors claim that as early as 2006, Flanders would lure in young women from across the nation with online postings for actresses and models. Once the women arrived in South Florida, Flanders would offer them drinks that he spiked with Xanax, investigators claim.
Once the drugs took effect, Callum, who is the president of Miami Vibes, a local adult pornography company, would engage in sexual acts with the women while Flanders recorded it, authorities said.
The footage would be included in porn DVDs and sold online and at local businesses, the feds said. The FBI raided Callum's Miami Gardens home in August and removed several boxes of DVDs and other evidence.
Both Flanders and Callum remain in federal custody.
The federal criminal trial against Flanders and Callum was scheduled to begin Monday, but was delayed until November, Flanders' attorney, Christian Dunham, said Tuesday. He said he wasn't aware of the Herman lawsuit and was only representing Flanders in the criminal case.
Calls for comment to an attorney for Callum weren't immediately returned Tuesday.
Herman was expected to discuss more details in the case at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.
