"Shocking Stories: OnlyFans Predators Pressure Girls into Explicit Acts—One Victim Shares Her Experience of Abuse and Stigma"

HAVING read about how much easy money can be made as an OnlyFans model, Rebecca was excited when she joined and got off to a good start.

“In my first month on I made about £4,000,” says the young mum, now 29, from South Wales.

The shady dealings of OnlyFans management agencies are revealed in a new BBC documentary Credit: BBC Rebecca was attacked in her home after receiving threats Credit: supplied

“I was then introduced to a by a friend of mine. They were lovely at the beginning, saying how beautiful I was and that I had the potential to make a lot of money.

“They sent me a form where I had to put my name and my password and send in my identification. It gave them full access to my account.

“They offered me 70 per cent of the cut but later they changed it to 50-50. Within a few weeks, whatever I sent in they started saying that I looked like s***. That was their exact words.

“It got quite abusive and controlling. If I wanted to go on a night out with the girls, I wasn’t allowed to because they said I’d be drinking and not putting in the work the next day. If I wanted to go away for the weekend, I couldn’t.

“They started talking me into , saying I could make but I said, no.

“I became aware that the management had locked one of the other girls out of her account and she was crying and in hysterics saying she didn’t know what to do.

“She had so much money in there. So, I went on to my account, changed my password and blocked my email. That’s when things escalated massively.

“I received text messages and phone calls where I was verbally abused.”

Rebecca still has the messages saying: “I will have you and your daughter wrote off,” “I’ll swing your daughter around by her hair,” “Cheeky c**t, watch your lips before things get serious,” and “Wonder why you’re a single mother? See you soon, wh*re.”

The messages stopped for a couple of days and Rebecca was just thinking it was all over when a brick was thrown through her window at home. Two weeks later, two men turned up as she arrived home and barged their way in.

“They started to strangle me and dragged me up and down the stairs. I thought, ‘This is it.’ And then, having proved their point, they stopped and left.”

Rebecca was left with bruises and scratches on her body but was too scared to report it to police, in case there were reprisals.

The lure of thousands of pounds being regularly made each month is turning more and more young girls to the that offers them “empowerment” and full control over what they choose to do and not to do.

But the investigative TV documentary, OnlyFans: Inside the Machine, shines a light on the murky, threatening and dangerous proliferation of unregulated management agencies.

There, predominantly young men often pressurise and abuse vulnerable women to do more explicit content.

Some take a whopping 50 to 70 per cent of the profits, leaving little else after the standard OF cut of 20 per cent.

“OnlyFans has boomed in recent years, particularly since the lockdown in 2020, but what was happening behind the scenes wasn’t clear,” journalist Amber Haque tells The Sun.

“The platform is very much about empowerment and creator independence and I met a lot of people that said that, but I also heard shocking stories about exploitation and control by some of these managers.

“It’s a side to this business model that has been going unchecked.”

, or ‘content creatives’ as they are also called, are often coerced into signing contracts enabling managers full access to account logs-ins, passwords and emails. In some cases, they have even swapped the model’s bank account for their own.

Gia Clarke says models are put under pressure to create more explicit content by OnlyFans management agencies Credit: Instagram/@giaxclarke Gia (left) and Lily Phillips (right) speak out on Amber Haque’s documentary for the BBC Credit: BBC

An astonishing 83 per cent of the 60 creators surveyed said they felt pressured to produce more explicit content with 60 per cent saying they were threatened when they tried to leave their agency.

Leanne, now 33, from Rotherham, had no intention of doing anything more explicit than lingerie photos when she started in 2020 but she was pressurised by her management, who took 50 per cent of the profits.

“Eventually, I did a video, just to keep them quiet really, in which I masturbated,” she says.

“I felt physically sick afterwards and didn’t watch it. I told them not to sell it for anything less than $250 (£187), and they agreed.

“But two days later I heard pings on my phone and saw that two people had bought it for $36 (£27). It made me feel so disgusting and degraded.

“I cried and I messaged the management saying the agreement was $250 and they just said, ‘We don’t think it’s going to be suitable working with you any longer because we don’t think we are going to benefit from you.’”

One creator told Amber Haque that her manager lied – claiming he was taking a 30 per cent cut, in reality he was nabbing 70 per cent. Additionally, he had changed her bank details to his on her profile, so all the money went to him.

To test OnlyFans verification process, Amber and her investigative team opened an account in the name of a female but with the bank details of a male colleague.

When two other men posed as subscribers, their money went straight into that account, no questions asked.

Another team member posed as a prospective manager on a Telegram group chat where more than 24,000 members share advice and were appalled at the misogyny that spewed out.

She messaged: “How do you guys convince the model to attach your own phone number and your own bank account to their OF?”

And received a reply from one person saying: “You just have to tell her some bulls*** and let her think it’s necessary to protect accounts/banking and yourself as an agency owner.”

Amber adds: “Management agencies are also selling their content creators to each other without their knowledge. The casual way they discuss the women, like they are selling a TV or a fridge, is shocking.”

One of the most successful models on the , who features in the documentary along with the site’s other big earner, .

is happy to do explicit content, but on her own terms. However, despite her lucrative living, she tells The Sun that she would not advise any young girl to go into the industry.

Lily claims she once made £200,000 a month on OnlyFans Credit: instagram/lilyphillip_s Gia says she wouldn’t advise any young woman to get into the industry Credit: Instagram/@giaxclarke

“My advice is always don’t do it! But if you are determined to then you need to be fully aware of what the realities are.

“I do still love OnlyFans but it is a lot more demanding now than when I joined back when it started in 2016. Agencies weren’t a thing then.

“I’ve dabbled with having an agency, here and there, but personally I found it doesn’t really correlate with my brand. I prefer being a bit more authentic.

“I think the whole point of being a content creator is that it’s meant to be like a personal experience between them and the consumer.

“Also, I don’t really like the thought of handing something so sensitive and personal to a third party.

“When people sign up to agencies there’s no way of knowing whether or not it is going to be a horror story, or whether they are actually going to do what they have been set up to do, because there’s absolutely zero regulation in place.

“People do come to me for advice and they think it will be a lot tamer than it is. You can be tame on the platform but guys know now that it is an explicit content site and that is what they are expecting.

“So, you do feel a lot of pressure to be more and more explicit and management definitely play a part in making women think they have to be doing extreme things if they want to attract attention, otherwise they’ll just going to get left behind.

From a survey of 60 creators, 60 per cent said they were threatened when they tried to leave their OnlyFans management agency Credit: Alamy Rebecca reveals the shady practices of OnlyFans management agencies Credit: supplied

“The fact is, there are a lot of models on the platform who don’t do explicit content and are still very successful. But it’s easy to fall into that mindset of thinking, ‘Right, if I show this or that, maybe I’ll make a bit extra this month.’

“It’s a huge issue within the industry that young girls are signing up to the platform, not really knowing what they’re getting themselves into and not really thinking about the consequences in the future.

“Most people don’t get to a point where they can make a comfortable living from it. So, in the end they’ve put themselves out there, doing things they probably wouldn’t have done otherwise, and now they’ve got nothing for it.

“And so, they will try to get a normal job but you can’t just walk back into society. It doesn’t work like that. I have never hidden what I do because I am not embarrassed by it, but people can be very judgemental.

“I was 22 when I started but even at that age I think I was too young. I would say that you should be at least 25, because I think that’s the point in your life when your frontal lobe develops and you can actually make proper choices. But lots of girls are starting now when they are 18.

“I don’t really like to discuss how much I make a month for numerous reasons.

“One of the main ones being that I don’t want to glamorise it for young girls who think, ‘Oh my God, I can be making all that.’ Because that was one of the reasons why I got so deep into OnlyFans. I saw girls online making thousands and thousands of pounds a month.

“Once it started happening to me, I thought, ‘Wow! This really is like life-changing money.’ But, as I say, it’s not the case for everyone. The sad reality is for most people that’s not what happens.”

In a statement, OnlyFans, commented: “OnlyFans was designed to empower creators to control and monetise their content.

“We take the safety of our users incredibly seriously and invest heavily in measures to protect our community, including strict onboarding processes, payment controls and ongoing account moderation.

“The allegation we ‘turn a blind eye’ to these issues is unfounded… many creators choose to work with reputable third parties who assist them with the promotion and operation of their online presence and social media accounts. OnlyFans’ relationship is with our Creators and Fans and we are not connected with, and do not endorse any third parties including management agencies.

“OnlyFans meets all of its duties under the Online Safety Act.

“OnlyFans’ safety by design approach helps catch bad actors trying to abuse our platform. Anyone exploiting our community should be reported to us and to the police.

“In the UK, where a creator requests a payout from their OnlyFans account, our third-party payment providers undertake Confirmation of Payee checks when processing that payment. Where this check is not successful the payment will be rejected.

“In addition to our own proactive safety controls, if anyone raises a concern about a Creator’s account, we will immediately restrict the account, conduct an investigation and take action to ensure the Creator is in control of their OnlyFans account.

“We work closely with law enforcement to support investigations and with charities and expert groups to continuously evolve our safety features.”

Only Fans: Inside the Machine, airs at 9pm tonight on BBC Three and 10.55pm on BBC One. It is also available to stream on BBC iPlayer.