'I can't fight him off': Adult film star Christian XXX's accusers tell their stories of sexual assault
Cassie Cummings tried to get justice by speaking out about her abuser on social media. Stefani Special attempted to warn other women by creating a website where more than a dozen women shared stories of being abused by the same man. Domino Presley called him the "Harvey Weinstein of the trans porn industry" at a public event in a room full of his peers.And yet the adult film star at the center of these sexual assault and harassment allegations has faced no professional consequences. In January, he was even up for a prize at the AVN Awards the Oscars of the adult film industry where he was nominated for Niche Specialty Performer of the Year. All three women are transgender adult film performers, two of whom claim they were sexually assaulted by 51-year-old porn star Christian Michael Wians, known in the industry and by his fans as Christian XXX.The allegations that Wians used his notoriety and influence in the industry to rape them, grope them, perform sex acts on them while on camera that they didn't consent to, or coerce them into not using condoms come from multiple women over the span of more than a decade. For this story, PRIDE spoke to two women who claim they were sexually assaulted by Wians, three other women who claim he harassed them online and who knew about his alleged pattern of abuse, and Wians himself.Performers Allege a Pattern of MisconductStefani Special recalls her first interaction with Wians, in 2013 when she was brand-new to the industry. When the seasoned performer sent her a direct message, Special didn't think much of the interaction, but when Grooby Productions one of the biggest trans adult film studios flew her to Los Angeles to be in her first hardcore film, she discovered that Wians had allegedly orchestrated a plan with the studio so that he could be her costar. "I thought that's just how the industry works. Unfortunately, I was just kind of new to everything at the time," Special said.While she was in the bathroom of the director's apartment, where they were filming, Special told PRIDE, Wians came in, and when she went to greet him and give him a hug, he started groping her butt and telling her how sexy she was, and suggested they "warm up here." Then, when she tried to pull away, he grabbed her breasts, she said. Things escalated quickly when Wians started rubbing himself through his jeans and took his penis out and started stroking himself in front of her, Special said. He then began kissing her while she tried to push him away, and she alleges that he asked her, "You want to suck it real quick?" Special explained that she tried to whisper and act cute to convince him to let her finish her makeup and wait to touch her until they were filming the scene, even going so far as to tell him that the director was waiting for her and that she knew their scene would be great and didn't want to ruin it.After this incident, she decided to keep quiet and continue with the shoot because she was afraid that if she spoke out and said she wasn't comfortable working with Wians, Grooby might cancel the production. Since she was new, she also remembers thinking, "Maybe that's how men are in this industry.""I did not want to do anything with him in that bathroom," Special recalled.But Wians said that he feels like all sexual contact on a porn set, regardless of whether the camera is rolling or not, is part of the making the adult film, and that all sexual contact that happens is considered part of the shoot. When you're on a porn set, you are having sex with somebody. It's not magic, Wians told PRIDE. And if it's someone that you've had sex with before, and they're there to have sex, and you're there to have sex, well, then you're there to have sex. And so if you're there to have sex, then you're going to have sex while you're on a porn set.Special ran into Wians again at an Adult Performer Advocacy Committee meeting, where she took him up on his offer to give her a ride home. She said she quickly realized this was a mistake when he forced her to perform oral sex on him. They were talking in the car on the way to her house when he started pushing her head down into his lap while unbuttoning his pants and allegedly told her to suck it. Wians denied groping Special or initiating any offcamera sexual contact without consent.Consenting to sex on camera doesnt give someone a blank check to push sexual contact outside of filming, industry experts say, but Special claims this is what Wians did when he pulled the car over, pushed her head down, and held it there while he ejaculated. What am I supposed to do at this moment? Can I say no? I dont know, she said.Special worked with Wians one more time following the incident, taking the job because she felt like she was between a rock and a hard place financially. However, when he pushed to go bareback in a scene where he originally agreed to wear a condom, she vowed never to work with him again.I wouldn't shoot a scene with a condom ever, Wians said. But I didn't try to talk her out of it. Again, if she doesn't want the money, she doesn't want the money, but the scene is going to be without a condom no matter what. So I don't know why she would interpret it as I'm trying to have her film without a condom, Im trying to have her make some money in this world. We're running a business. This isn't like I'm trying to fuck her off camera with or without a condom. I'm not some guy at a frat party. It's business.According to Sam Shift, the co-owner and co-director of queer independent porn studio altSHIFT films, the choice whether or not to use condoms in a scene has to be agreed upon by both performers. If one person wants to use a condom, then everyone in the scene obviously will use a condom, Shift said, explaining that the only time it would be acceptable to forgo protection is if everyone involved in the scene agreed to that before shooting.In 2017, Special and fellow trans adult film performer Jamie French who also alleges having been assaulted by Wians started the website Performers Speak Out (which has since shut down), where they both shared their stories and gave other performers a place to write about their experiences with Wians and other alleged abusers in the industry. The whistleblower website held the stories of more than a dozen women, most of whom detailed their experience of being sexually assaulted or harassed by Wians. "What we wanted to do was not only for Christian but all of the shitty people in the industry who abuse people. We wanted to give the survivors or victims a place to tell their story and hopefully make it known, and for other girls not to have to go through that same thing because they see the story," Special said.Another Performer Comes ForwardNearly a decade after Special first met Wians, adult film performer Cassie Cummings went through a similar experience.Wians approached her on X (formerly Twitter) to see if she was interested in working with him. The mutually agreed-upon plan was for Wians to pay Cummings $1,000 and cover the cost of her flight to Las Vegas and stay at a hotel, where they would film one penetrative sex scene and one oral sex scene. But she recalls that things quickly took a turn once she arrived. While she and Wians rode the hotel's elevator up to their floor, he began "cupping and feeling" her butt in full view of two unknown men who were standing behind them in the elevator, Cummings said. "I could have said no, I could have slapped his hand or whatever," she explained, but what was running through her head was how the odds were stacked against her. She was in a 4-foot-by-4-foot space with three men, and Wians was over 6 feet tall and had at least 100 pounds on her, so she decided not to say anything.Before filming begins, performers are usually provided with an outline of which sex acts will be included in the scene especially if anal or bondage are involved so that performers can arrive prepared, know what to expect, and discuss any boundaries they have with the director, Shift said of the norms within the adult film industry. Wians did not adhere to these industry standards, Cummings said. While filming a scene, Cummings said Wians immediately performed a sex act that she didnt consent to."That's when he pulls the ass-to-mouth move on me without any sort of communication whatsoever. He just literally pulls out, takes my head, and pushes it down," Cummings recounted, adding, "That's a hard no for a lot of people. We didn't even discuss it.After this, Cummings alleges that she went into the bathroom, which had been set up as her dressing room, to reset her makeup before the next scene, when Wians came up behind her to put her in a chokehold and began anally penetrating her from behind while whispering in her ear. "He was in my ear telling me it was my fault, that I'm too sexy, he can't help himself, how could I do this to him," she said. In the moment, she froze. "I can't fight him off, he's just going to choke me out," Cummings said. "I'm in a really bad situation." Wians denied performing any sexual act without Cummingss consent. Beth Bernstein, a marriage and family therapist who works with people who have experienced trauma and used to treat sex workers, told PRIDE that, generally speaking, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and faint are common involuntary responses to a perceived threat or traumatic event. Freeze is just partially a response to kind of mitigate the damage, she explained. If I just sit here or I mechanically go through something, maybe this will be finished a lot faster, maybe damage or the violence or the injury will be a lot less. People arent in the reasoning, executive functioning part of their brain, its usually the involuntary the nervous system just switched into, Im just going to kind of shut down and just survive this.Cummings alleges that Wians only stopped raping her after the woman running the camera came toward them and cleared her throat. Then she had a decision to make try to leave and go to the police, or walk out of the bathroom and finish the job. "I'm still thinking about that $1,000 and how much that is. So I walk back out and I'm ready," she said. "How much worse can it get, right?"They filmed the scene, and then Cummings started getting nervous again because it was time for the camerawoman to leave, as she wouldn't be needed for the next scene a point-of-view oral sex scene. "I still held out hope that there was still some protection offered to me by her being there," she said.But before they could finish up for the night, Wians announced he needed a break and sent Cummings downstairs to get him something to drink. "I remember being down in the snack shop and just dissociating into the drink cooler," Cummings explained as her eyes filled with tears. "I felt incredibly alone, even with all of these people around me. They're going about their day, they're on vacation, this poor person is just working in a snack shop, not ready for the dissociating rape victim across the room."Bernstein said that dissociating after a traumatic event like a sexual assault is a way for a victims mind to depersonalize the event and create a distance so that it doesnt feel like its happening to them. Its a way your mind is trying to hide the horror of what just happened from yourself, she said. Its either like it never happened or like it happened to a very distant version of yourself. Youre still trying to survive. Its kind of like, if I minimize this, if I distance it, if I do all kinds of mental gymnastics, maybe I dont really have to sit with what just happened to me. Cummings said that looking back on it, she should have left the hotel and never come back, but instead, she forced herself to go back upstairs. "I still in that moment didn't feel like I could leave, and I don't think I'll ever understand the rationale that put me back in that room, she said.When she returned to the hotel room, Wians announced that he no longer wanted to film a POV oral sex scene like planned. Instead, he wanted them to do a POV sex scene without any discussion or increase in pay, allegedly telling Cummings, "I've got to have you like this." Cummings said she was still new enough that she didnt understand the ins and outs of the industry, which typically pays different amounts depending on the type of sex scene being filmed solo scenes pay less than penetrative sex, and anal and group scenes tend to pay the most.There were no further alleged assaults while they finished filming, but Cummings told Wians she never wanted to work with him again. Cummings knows that people are going to have a hard time with her accounting of events because she didn't go to the police, but she said she was so traumatized by what happened that it took her three or four days after the rape before she was even able to open up to her partner. "I really don't trust the police. I don't trust them as a trans person. I don't trust them just as an American citizen. I don't trust them," she explained. "And so knowing the statistics around rape convictions and knowing the statistics around trans individuals reporting to the police, I didn't see any point."Women who are victims of sexual assault are rarely believed, but not only are trans women more likely to be victims of a sexually violent crime, they are also more likely to be assaulted by police. Trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be the victims of violent crimes, including sexual assault and rape, the Williams Institute at UCLA reports. And according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 47 percent of transgender people have been sexually assaulted, and this number is even higher for sex workers. The center's 2019 study also found that 58 percent of transgender people who interacted with law enforcement in the past year experienced mistreatment, such as verbal harassment, repeated misgendering, physical assault, or sexual assault.If you dont expect to be believed, if you think youre going to be blamed, if youre afraid youre going to be shamed, if there is a financial control component to it, or a power dynamic where youre like, If I report this, if I say this to somebody, the possibility that the repercussions are just going to get worse there are all kinds of reasons why you wouldnt disclose to anybody, Bernstein said.Wians sent PRIDE a screenshot of a text conversation that took place after the alleged assault, in which Cummings wrote, I had a ton of fun. Cant wait to work with you again. Cummings verified that the text exchange was real but said that it was sent out of self-preservation.I feel regretful because I wish I had been a braver person in that moment. These messages were meant to keep him happy and myself safe, she said. I did not write them thinking they would be used to convince others that what hed done was appropriate.At the time, I was feeling a lot of pressure to be OK with what happened because I wanted my first paid scene to be a successful one," she added. "I went to work that day expecting to be treated with respect, but what I got was something totally different. Without the experience to know differently, I was acting out of self-preservation.Wians also provided a link to a behind-the-scenes interview Cummings recorded with him after the alleged assault. Cummings confirmed that the interview did take place, but that he sprung it on her. I did my best to remain calm despite disassociation. It does not indicate any level of consent, she said.Wians claims he never raped anybody and said that Cummings only made allegations against him because her then-girlfriend was angry with him over a business deal that went sour. He said Special is claiming he sexually assaulted her because he refused to continue to hire her girlfriend at the time, Jamie French. He also said that sexually assaulting someone on one of his own film sets would just slow down production, causing him to lose money.I'm doing 30 scenes a month. I'm filming every day, Wians said. Im not like a sex depraved do you know what I mean? I can't have sex off camera many times because I don't have all the sperm in the world. Do you know what I mean? So it's not like I can go around, like having sex with everybody, because I have to have sex on camera. And if you can't have an orgasm or nothing comes out, that's no good.The Women Speak OutInstead of going to the police, Cummings decided to speak out because she feared Wians would do this again to other performers. On September 6, 2022, she posted a Twitter thread detailing her alleged sexual assault at the hands of Wians. "I was raped by a [Las Vegas] producer named Christian XXX. He preyed on me when I was new to the industry, as is his MOI haven't been strong enough to speak out widely but now I am," she wrote at the time. After coming forward, she was flooded with DMs from other women sharing their own harrowing experiences with Wians, but she also faced criticism. "This gets thrown at me a lot, but I was paid to be there. I was paid. And so a lot of folks think that that is grounds to dismiss me entirely. You know, I received money for what happened that day, and it doesn't make it right," she said.Cummings said she has been dealing with the emotional effects of what Wians did for years she still flinches if someone comes up behind her or tries to hug her from behind. She also thinks it impacted her ability to get work at some studios who, after she spoke out publicly, claimed she was "difficult to work with."After the whistleblower website was created in 2017, and Cummingss social posts made waves in 2022, word of Wianss alleged behavior spread far in the adult entertainment industry. Several performers told PRIDE they believe he is no longer booked by certain studios that feature trans adult films. PRIDE was unable to verify those claims with the studios, but Wians appears to no longer work for these studios and instead runs his own websites and serves as his own director and producer. According to a search through Groobys archives, Wians hasnt been featured in an adult film on the website since 2016.Wianss accusers claim he has an insidious and effective pattern. He finds women from marginalized communities trans and Big Beautiful Women (BBW) adult film performers who are new to the porn industry, contacts them through social media, and then through a combination of compliments, flirting, and offers of money and opportunities, he entices women who have no experience in the world of adult films to fly to meet him at a hotel in Las Vegas, where he takes advantage of them.This is exactly the offer Wians made to Allie Sparks, who believes she only narrowly avoided the same fate as other women who he allegedly assaulted because she listened to warnings from other women in the industry.Sparks, a BBW adult content creator, was brand-new to the industry when Wians approached her for a job. She had never heard of him before he reached out to her on X to ask if she'd be interested in filming with him, but she was excited when she realized "he had a really big following.On May 18, 2024, Sparks alleges that Wians sent her a DM saying he "would like to shoot with me," and two days later, he made a familiar offer that she couldn't refuse: He would pay for her round-trip tickets to fly to Las Vegas and put her up in a hotel room that they would also use for filming. All she had to do was film two non-condom scenes and one 12- to 14-minute POV clip, and she would walk away with $1,300 in cash.She quickly started to see red flags in their online communications. "This is a solo mission, and no one else is coming with you on this trip," Wians messaged her, according to Sparks. "I thought that was a little weird," she said. But the money he was offering was too good to turn down it would have covered her rent for the month so they booked the trip for the first week of July 2024. "I was excited. I was looking forward to it. I had it on my calendar, it seemed like a really big deal," she recalled.Before the date of their shoot arrived, she remembered having a conversation with another adult film star who had told her that Wians "pays really good money, but he's an asshole" and showed her a text exchange where he was allegedly harassing her. Her fellow performer pointed her to Cummingss X thread about her own alleged sexual assault at the hands of Wians.Shocked by Cummingss account, Sparks messaged Wians to confront him about it. "It was met with some hostility," she remembered. "I wrote, 'I don't work with rapists, so our shoot is never happening.' He wrote, 'Ha ha, who did I rape and why am I not in jail ,then?' So I wrote, 'You seem to enjoy deflecting and asking questions instead of answering them. Are you going to try to tell me that you've never raped or sexually assaulted anyone?'"Then she blocked him on X, but he started messaging her on her Google Voice number, so she blocked him there. He claimed that if he had done what she accused him of, he would have been in prison already, "but we both know it doesn't work like that," Sparks said.After this interaction, she reached out to other BBW performers with more experience in the industry, who assured her she had made the right decision by choosing to forgo the money in favor of her safety. "They said, 'Never work with him, he's a bad guy, like he's basically blacklisted in the industry.'"Had she not remembered the conversation she had about him weeks prior, Sparks said things could have ended very differently for her. "I feel like I got really lucky," she explained, "I happened to run into the right people and remembered his name, and I know a lot of people are not that lucky."While trans adult film performer and director Chelsea Poe never met Wians in person, she said he slid into her DMs back in 2014 and tried to convince her to shoot a scene for his website without condoms, despite her insistence that she always uses protection on set in her more than 10 years in the industry, she has never shot a scene without using a condom.Poe shared this interaction on the Performers Speak Out website because, although she has little faith that abusers within the industry will face justice she cited the sexual assault allegations against porn star James Deen that never led to criminal charges she wanted to help warn other performers not to work with Wians.Poe said that it was experiences like the one she had with Wians that made her "very jaded, very early on" in her career, but she wanted to tell her story because "what you can do is speak out so that people will know."These stories are eerily similar to those of countless actresses who shared their experiences during the #MeToo movement, but these women have been left out of the conversation because of their gender identity and choice of career.Couple that with a fear that they not only wouldn't be believed by the police because they are women, trans, and porn stars, but many feared what kind of treatment they would have to endure at the hands of the police if they tried to report the sexual assaults or harassment. For these women, the only recourse they felt they had was to go public to warn other performers.Wians, on the other hand, is frustrated that he was being questioned about these sexual assault and harassment allegations instead of his contributions to the industry and his support of the trans community. My girlfriend's trans. My girlfriend before that was trans. My camera girl is trans. My assistant is trans. Everyone in my life is trans, he explained. I have done more for the trans community in my 25-year career than any guy ever. I've won the [Trans Erotica Awards] Male Performer of the Year. I've gotten the Trans Scene of the Year at the AVNs. I'm in the Hall of Fame. I'm not some nobody from nowhere that just shows up. Now that I'm a producer, I'm also putting hundreds of thousands of dollars in the pockets of trans women every year."The Harvey Weinstein of the trans porn industry"Special and Cummings aren't the only ones who have tried to publicly raise the alarm about Wians. In 2021, trans porn star Domino Presley, who has been in the industry since 2010, spoke out about him while hosting the Trans Erotica Awards.Not only had Presley had a sexual experience with Wians where she felt used and another incident where she claimed he punched her in the back while they were filming a scene together, but she had been told stories by many women who claim he sexually assaulted them. So when Wians ended up as one of the nominees for Cis Male Porn Star of the Year, she was shocked and made the split-second decision to say something publicly. She interrupted the presenters to express her disappointment that he was in the running for the award, calling him the "Harvey Weinstein of the trans porn industry" in front of a huge crowd of people, while only one performer, Casey Kisses, defended him. PRIDE has viewed video footage of the awards show and can corroborate Presley's accounting of events.Presley said that Steven Grooby, whose trans adult film studio, Grooby Productions, runs the Trans Erotica Awards, asked Wians not to attend the awards show anymore because of the allegations made against him, but she was disappointed that he was still nominated. Special reported that the studio also banned Wians from performing in their films.Presley said that she was reprimanded by Grooby, who claimed that speaking out while onstage was "bullying Christian," but she explained that things could have gone badly if Wians had won in his category. "I don't think you understand," she said she told Grooby. "What if Christian was here? What if Christian won, and what if the girl presenting to him was one of his victims? That would be your fault." Since then, Presley has continued to host the awards show, and Wians has not been nominated again.Wians claims that he still works with Grooby, who is an affiliate of his adult film business, and said that he and Grooby made the mutual decision that he shouldnt attend or get nominated in the awards show anymore. I said, Why nominate me? I'm not going, and what's the point? Why do I care about awards again? I have my own website, trying to make money. I'm a producer and a performer, but a producer first, he said.PRIDE made repeated attempts over the course of many months to contact Steven Grooby through email, phone calls, and social media direct messages, but he did not respond.All of the women interviewed for this story pointed out that because there is no studio, production company, or human resources department holding Wians accountable, he is allegedly able to continue to push boundaries and assault the trans women he hires to be in his films without fear of repercussions. Shift explained that whether adult performers work for a small indie studio or one of the major studios, there would be someone in a position of power to report misconduct to. I work for big companies there are nine of us on the crew, so if there is a problem theyve got whoever they're comfortable to talk with, and if theyre not, then they can go to the owner of the company, but with an independent porn star who runs their own sites and directs their own films there is no chain of hierarchy to ask for help. Wians denies all of the allegations lodged against him.For the women who were allegedly harassed or sexually assaulted by Wians, speaking out and talking to other survivors has been cathartic. You know, lots of women face sexual violence, and so Im not alone, right? But to have so many people reach out to me about my specific abuser and the experiences they had with him has made me feel a little bit stronger about saying what has happened to me and really kind of believing that I can stand up to him, Cummings said.The names of the women in this article are the stage names they use in their careers as adult film performers and are not their legal names. If you or someone you know is in need of crisis support, you can reach out to the Crisis Text Line at www.crisistextline.org or text "HOME" to 741-741If you or someone you know has information, or if you believe you may have been affected, we want to hear from you. Please consider sharing your story using this confidential form. Your voice matters.
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