Update (August, 2020): Serial defamer & harasser Nicole Pause loses lawsuits to Gary Wilson. In August of 2020 court rulings fully exposed Nicole Prause as the perpetrator, not the victim. In March of 2020, Prause sought a groundless temporary restraining order (TRO) against me using fabricated “evidence” and her usual lies (falsely accusing me of stalking). In Prause’s request for the restraining order she perjured herself, saying I posted her address on YBOP and Twitter (perjury is nothing new with Prause). I filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against Prause for misusing the legal system (TRO) to silence and harass me. On August 6, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled that Prause’s attempt to obtain a restraining order against me constituted a frivolous and illegal “strategic lawsuit against public participation” (commonly called a “SLAPP suit”). Prause lied throughout her fraudulent TRO, providing zero verifiable evidence to support her outlandish claims that I stalked or harassed her. In essence, the Court found that Prause abused the restraining order process to bully me into silence and undercut his rights to free speech. By law, the SLAPP ruling obligates Prause to pay my attorney fees.
Update (January, 2021): Prause filed a second frivolous legal proceeding against me in December, 2020 for alleged defamation. At a hearing on January 22, 2021 an Oregon court ruled in my favor and charged Prause with costs and an additional penalty. This failed effort was one of a dozen lawsuits Prause publicly threatened and/or filed in the previous months. After years of malicious reporting, she has escalated to threats of actual lawsuits to try to silence those who reveal her close ties to the porn industry and her malicious conduct, or who have made sworn statements in the 3 defamation suits currently active against her.
Gary Wilson’s cyberstalker, Dr. Nicole Prause, prepared a libelous blog piece, which she posted on an adult industry website. It was removed after I tweeted this. (Original url: http://mikesouth.com/scumbags/dr-nicole-prause-destroys-yourbrainonporn-dont-fall-22064/).
The site containing Prause’s libelous blog piece describes itself as follows:
Mike South adult industry blog, the premier destination for adult industry news since 1998. Mike South was a small-time porn producer, who won two AVN awards, turned adult news blog pioneer. South was cited on a host of major news sites, and Gawker.com acknowledged him as “the gonzo king of porn gossip”.
Prause working with Mike South provides clear evidence of Prause’s porn-industry connections (hundreds of more examples on this page):
In her defamatory piece, Prause knowingly, falsely stated that,
[Gary Wilson] claims to have been a “professor in Biology”. In reality, he was supposed to be an undergrad instructor, not a professor, for a lab section at Southern Oregon University. He was fired without pay immediately before completing even a quarter.
Prause also posted this same defamatory material on Quora, falsely stating that “Wilson was fired without pay”:
I reported Prause to both Quora and Twitter for violation of terms of service and harassment. Both acted upon my complaints, removing my employment document and Prause’s false interpretation of it. Confirmation of Quora acting on my complaint (not the first violation for harassing me):
Quora permanently bans Nicole Prause for harassing me:
Gary Wilson also reported Prause to twitter. Twitter’s reply:
Prause’s twitter account was suspended for a day.
In truth, I was an Adjunct Instructor at Southern Oregon University and have never claimed to be a professor – although careless journalists and websites have assigned him an array of titles in error over the years – including a now-defunct page on a website that pirates many TEDx talks and describes the speakers carelessly without contacting them. Below is the screenshot Prause posts to “prove” that I misrepresented my credentials (again, the Gary Wilson page no longer exists). Note: Until Prause produced her “proof,” I had never seen this site and has never communicated with its hosts. Thus I never provided a bio, or claims of “professorship” for it. I do not seek speaking engagements and have never accepted fees for speaking. Moreover, YBOP accepts no ads, and the proceeds from Gary Wilson’s book go to a registered charity.
On the about page the Keynotes.org website said that it is not an agency and that anyone could upload a video and speaker bio: Keynotes.org is not an agency, but rather, a media site…. Keynotes.org is crowdsourced and fueled by TrendHunter.com, the world’s largest trend spotting website. Thus, it is even possible that Prause uploaded Gary’s TEDx talk with a purposely inaccurate bio in order to fabricate her desired “proof” of misrepresentation. After 8 years of continuous harassment and cyber-stalking, faked documents, libelous assertions, hundreds of tweets, and dozens of usernames with hundreds of comments, nothing would surprise us.
I taught at Southern Oregon University on two occasions. I was never “fired,” as can be seen from the employment documents beneath this paragraph. I also taught anatomy, physiology and pathology at a number of other schools over a period of two decades, and was certified to teach these subjects by the education departments of both Oregon and California (YBOP About us page). I have never said I had a PhD or was a professor.
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Below is the “un-redacted” copy of the document Prause posted on several websites. Prause claimed it meant that I was fired, when it actually meant “terminate paychecks” as I had to resign due to a medical emergency. The Prause version redacted the COMMENTS section, where SOU stated that I resigned due to a health crisis.
Incidentally, Gary receives no compensation from the charity to which his proceeds from his book go. His position as Research Officer is an honorary (volunteer) one. Nor does he serve on the Board of the charity or otherwise determine how it disburses its funds.
He hopes that one day TED will remove the unmerited warning that his critics (headed by Prause) lobbied long and hard to have placed on his very popular TEDx talk. Not only was there comprehensive empirical support for “The Great Porn Experiment” (2012), hundreds of additional studies have been published since 2012 that fully support Gary Wilson’s claims. These 2 pages provide slide by slide support for TGPE:
- Empirical support for “The Great Porn Experiment” – TEDx Glasgow (2012): Slides 1-17
- Empirical support for “The Great Porn Experiment” – TEDx Glasgow (2012): Slides 18-35
In addition to placing the redacted employment document and associated libelous statements on a porn industry site, Prause used Quora and Twitter to spread her lies. In doing so, Prause was banned from Quora, and suspend by Twitter. See these two sections from the “Prause page”:
- March 5, 2018 – Prause banned from Quora for harassing Gary Wilson
- March 12, 2018 – Prause’s Liberos Twitter account suspended for posting Gary Wilson’s private information in violation of Twitter Rules
I also hope that Dr. Prause will quit libeling and harassing him and others. Although this new instance of libel (her false claim that I was fired) isn’t as shocking as her libelous claim that she has a no-contact court order against me, it is equally untrue.
Perhaps it is time for Dr. Prause to grow up and behave like the professional she claims to be.
PS: Southern Oregon University has confirmed that Nicole Prause was the only one who sought his employment records. Email below:
Prause’s usual partner in targeted harassment, David Ley, also falsely stated that I was was fired from Southern Oregon university:
Another libelous tweet by Ley, promoting the Mike South article (that was later deleted):
Prause tweeted several times to promote her libel, linking to her Quora article (the article that got her banned from quora – see: https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-your-brain-on-porn-movement/answer/Nicole-Prause
Another tweet, full of lies, as documented in this section of the Prause page – Ongoing – Prause falsely claims that Wilson has misrepresented his credentials
More libelous tweets by Prause & Ley, linking to Nikky’s quora post with my SOU employment records:
FYI – Prause harassed TED for 5 straight years… and they gave in. But everything in the TEDX talk is fully supported. See –
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May, 2018: Several allies have joined Prause & Ley in their defamatory claims that Wilson was fired from SOU. For example, Tammy Ellis posting the following during her and Prause’s coordinated cyber-attack on the Fight The New Drug Facebook page (documented here: May 30, 2018: Prause falsely accuses FTND of science fraud, and implies that she has reported Gary to the FBI twice):
Not only is Tammy Johnson Ellis lying about Wilson being terminated she is also lying about “cherry-picking pieces of research”. In all the hundreds of defamatory posts and tweets Ley, Prause, Ellis, and their allies have never once provided an example of Wilson “cherry-picking” (see YBOP’s main research page for the current state of the research).
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Continuing into 2019: Prause continues to post defamatory tweets claiming that Wilson was “terminated” from SOU, or was a TA (teaching assistant) at Southern Oregon University (rather than adjunct faculty). In addition, she continues to lie about Wilson misrepresenting his credentials.
Tweet #2: 2-24-2019
Obsessed cyberstalker strikes again…. on a Sunday. The Prause lies: Wilson was not terminated, nor was he a TA (as documented in this current section). Wilson never misrepresented his credentials, and Prause has never cited any evidence for this. See: Ongoing – Prause falsely claims that Wilson has misrepresented his credentials.
COPE never asked for a retraction. Everything Prause said about the MDPI paper is a lie – as documented on these pages and here: Prause’s efforts to have Behavioral Sciences review paper (Park et al., 2016) retracted
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April 1, 2019: Prause and David Ley once again lie about about Gary Wilson’s SOU employment.
Background: On March 31, 2016, the TIME cover story (“Porn and the Threat to Virility”), by Belinda Luscombe, featuring Gabe Deem, Nicole Prause, David Ley, Gary Wilson, and many others, was published. It was a year in the making and TIME had the author and other TIME employees (fact checkers) follow-up on claims made by each person interviewed. Once published Prause and her alias “PornHelps” viciously attacked and libeled its author Belinda Luscombe:
- Others – July, 2016: Nicole Prause & “PornHelps” falsely accuse TIME editor Belinda Luscombe of lying and misquoting
- Others – April, 2016: A Nicole Prause sock puppet edits the Belinda Luscombe Wikipedia page
On April 1, 2019, both Gary Wilson and Belinda Luscombe weighed in on a long twitter thread discussing validity of the General Social Survey (which claimed that only 45% of men, aged 18-29, had viewed an X-rated movie in the last year). Within a few minutes Prause joined the tread to attack and libel Luscombe and Wilson (long-time Prause ally David Ley also libeled Wilson). In her first of 8 tweets, Prause repeats the same lies documented on this page. She also calls Belinda a fake journalist, engaging fraud.
Since Prause has blocked Belinda, Ley jumps in to “paraphrase” (but omits Prause’s attacks on Belinda). Belinda responds:
David Ley joins in with 2 of his own lies: That Wilson was a TA (teacher assistant) and he was fired.
Truth doesn’t stop Ley or Prause from continuing their Twitter libel-fest, attacking Belinda Luscombe and Wilson.
All provable libel:
- I did not drop out of college.
- I did not default on his student loans.
- I was not a TA. I was ‘Adjunct Faculty.’ (How could I be a TA if I was not attending SOU as a student?)
What’s going on here?
For years both Prause and Ley have teamed up to defame, harass and cyber-stalk individuals and organizations that have warned of porn’s harms or published research reporting porn’s harms. Recently, Prause and Ley escalated their unethical and often illegal activities in support of a porn industry agenda. For example, on January 29, 2019, Prause filed a trademark application to obtain YOURBRAINONPORN and YOURBRAINONPORN.COM. In April 2019, a group headed by Prause and Ley engaged in unlawful trademark infringement of YourBrainOnPorn.com by creating “RealYourBrainOnPorn.com.
To advertise their illegitimate site, the self-proclaimed “experts” created a Twitter account (https://twitter.com/BrainOnPorn), YouTube channel, Facebook page, and published a press release. In a further attempt to confuse the public, the press release falsely claims to originate from Gary Wilson’s home town – Ashland, Oregon (none of the “experts” live in Oregon, let alone Ashland). Judge for yourself whether the “experts” further the interests of the porn industry or the authentic search scientific truth by perusing this collection of RealYBOP tweets. Written in Dr. Prause’s distinctive misleading style, the tweets extol the benefits of porn, misrepresent the current state of the research, and troll individuals and organizations Prause has previously harassed.
In addition, the “experts” created a Reddit account (user/sciencearousal) to spam porn recovery forums reddit/pornfree and reddit/NoFap with promotional drivel, claiming porn use is harmless and disparaging YourBrainOnPorn.com and Gary Wilson. It’s important to note that Prause, a former academic, has a long documented history of employing numerous aliases to post on porn recovery forums. (YBOP is now engaged in legal action with Prause and her pro-porn allies).
In July of 2019, David Ley and two of the better known RealYBOP “experts” (Justin Lehmiller and Chris Donaghue) began openly collaborating with the porn industry. All 3 are on the advisory board of the fledgling Sexual Health Alliance (SHA). In a blatant financial conflict of interest, David Ley and the SHA are being compensated by porn industry giant xHamster to promote its websites (i.e. StripChat) and to convince users that porn addiction and sex addiction are myths!
More on Nicole Prause
In 2013 former UCLA researcher Nicole Prause began openly harassing, libeling and cyberstalking Gary Wilson. (Prause has not been employed by an academic institution since January, 2015.) Within a short time she also began targeting others, including researchers, medical doctors, therapists, psychologists, a former UCLA colleague, a UK charity, men in recovery, a TIME magazine editor, several professors, IITAP, SASH, Fight The New Drug, Exodus Cry, NoFap.com, RebootNation, YourBrainRebalanced, the academic journal Behavioral Sciences, its parent company MDPI, US Navy medical doctors, the head of the academic journal CUREUS, and the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity (PDF Documenting Prause’s Malicious Reporting Pattern).
While spending her waking hours harassing others, Prause cleverly cultivated – with zero verifiable evidence – a myth that she was “the victim” of most anyone who dared to disagree with her irresponsible assertions surrounding porn’s effects or the current state of porn research. To counter the ongoing harassment and false claims, YBOP was compelled to document some of Prause’s activities. Consider the following pages. (Additional incidents have occurred that we are not at liberty to divulge – as Prause’s victims fear further retribution.)
- Nicole Prause’s Unethical Harassment and Defamation of Gary Wilson & Others
- Nicole Prause’s Unethical Harassment and Defamation of Gary Wilson & Others (page 2)
- Nicole Prause’s Unethical Harassment and Defamation of Gary Wilson & Others (Page 3)
- Nicole Prause’s Unethical Harassment and Defamation of Gary Wilson & Others (Page 4)
- Nicole Prause’s Unethical Harassment and Defamation of Gary Wilson & Others (Page 5)
- Legal victories over serial harasser/defamer Nicole Prause: She’s the perpetrator, not the victim!
- Prause’s efforts to silence Wilson foiled; her restraining order denied as frivolous & she owes substantial attorney fees in a SLAPP ruling
- Nicole Prause & David Ley libelous claim that Gary Wilson was fired from Southern Oregon University
- Prause’s efforts to have Behavioral Sciences review paper (Park et al., 2016) retracted
- Article by University of Wisconsin student newspaper (The Racquet) posts false police report by Nicole Prause (March, 2019)
- Aggressive Trademark Infringement Waged by Porn Addiction Deniers (www.realyourbrainonporn.com)
- Victims of Nicole Prause’s Malicious Reporting and Malicious Use of Process.
In the beginning Prause employed dozens of fake usernames to post on porn recovery forums, Quora, Wikipedia, and in the comment sections under articles. Prause rarely used her real name or her own social media accounts. That all changed after UCLA chose not to renew Prause’s contract (around January, 2015).
Freed from any oversight and now self-employed, Prause added two media managers/promoters from Media 2×3 to her company’s tiny stable of “Collaborators.” (erstwhile Media 2×3 president Jess Ponce describes himself as a Hollywood media coach and personal branding expert.) Their job is to place articles in the press featuring Prause, and find her speaking engagements in pro-porn and mainstream venues. Odd tactics for a supposedly impartial scientist.
Prause began to put her name to falsehoods, openly cyber-harassing multiple individuals and organizations on social media and elsewhere. Since Prause’s primary target was Gary Wilson (hundreds of social media comments along with behind the scenes email campaigns), it became necessary to monitor and document Prause’s tweets and posts. This was done for her victims’ protection, and crucial for any future legal actions.
It soon became apparent that Prause’s tweets and comments were rarely about sex research, neuroscience, or any other subject related to her claimed expertise. In fact, the vast majority of Prause’s posts could be divided into two overlapping categories:
- Indirect support of the porn industry: Defamatory & ad hominem comments targeting individuals and organizations that she labeled as “anti-porn activists” (often claiming to be a victim of these individuals and organizations). Documented here:Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5.
- Direct support of the porn industry:
- especially the FSC (Free Speech Coalition), AVN (Adult Video News), porn producers, performers, and their agendas
- countless misrepresentations of the state of pornography research and attacks on porn studies or porn researchers.
The following pages contain a sampling of tweets and comments related to #2 – her vigorous support of the porn industry and its chosen positions. YBOP is of the view that Prause’s unilateral aggression has escalated to such frequent and reckless defamation (falsely accusing her many victims of “physically stalking her,” “misogyny,” “encouraging others to rape her,” and “being neo-Nazis”), that we are compelled to examine her possible motives. This material is divided into 4 main sections:
- SECTION 1: Nicole Prause & the porn industry:
- Falsely accusing others of saying the porn industry funds some of her research
- In 2015 the Free Speech Coalition offers Prause assistance: she accepts and immediately attacks Prop 60 (condoms in porn)
- The Free Speech Coalition allegedly provided subjects for a Prause study that “debunks” porn addiction
- Prause’s direct support for porn industry (FSC, AVN, XBIZ, xHamster, PornHub)
- Prause’s intimate relationships with porn industry performers, directors, and producers
- Evidence that Nicole Prause attends porn industry awards (XRCO, AVN)
- SECTION 2: Was Nicole Prause “PornHelps”? (PornHelps website, @pornhelps on Twitter, comments under articles). All accounts deleted once Prause was outed as “PornHelps.”
- SECTION 3: Examples of Nicole Prause supporting porn industry interests via misrepresentation of the research & attacking studies/researchers.
- SECTION 4: “RealYBOP”: Prause and associates create a biased website and social media accounts that support a pro-porn industry agenda.
Please note: There is unequivocal evidence that the porn industry funded the sexology profession for decades. Sexology’s agenda still appears to serve the porn industry. Thus, the evidence on this page should be viewed in a larger context. See Hugh Hefner, the International Academy of Sex Research, and Its Founding President to understand how porn-industry friendly sexologists influenced the Kinsey Institute. Prause is a Kinsey grad.
UPDATE: Prause is now embroiled in two defamation lawsuits (Donald Hilton, MD & Nofap founder Alexander Rhodes), a trademark infringement case, and a trademark squatting case.
More on David Ley
David Ley’s financial conflicts of interest (COI) seem evident.
COI #1: In a blatant financial conflict of interest, David Ley is being compensated by porn industry giant X-hamster to promote their websites and to convince users that porn addiction and sex addiction are myths! Specifically, David Ley and the newly formed Sexual Health Alliance (SHA) have partnered with a X-Hamster website (Strip-Chat). See “Stripchat aligns with Sexual Health Alliance to stroke your anxious porn-centric brain“:
The fledgling Sexual health Alliance (SHA) advisory board includes David Ley and two other RealYourBrainOnPorn.com “experts” (Justin Lehmiller & Chris Donahue). RealYBOP is a group of openly pro-porn, self-proclaimed “experts” headed by Nicole Prause. This is also the group currently engaged in illegal trademark infringement and squatting directed toward the legitimate YBOP. Put simply, those trying to silence YBOP are also being paid by the porn industry to promote its/their businesses, and assure users that porn and cam sites cause no problems (note: Nicole Prause has close, public ties to the porn industry as documented on this page).
In this article, Ley dismisses his compensated promotion of the porn industry:
Granted, sexual health professionals partnering directly with commercial porn platforms face some potential downsides, particularly for those who’d like to present themselves as completely unbiased. “I fully anticipate [anti-porn advocates] to all scream, ‘Oh, look, see, David Ley is working for porn,’” says Ley, whose name is routinely mentioned with disdain in anti-masturbation communities like NoFap.
But even if his work with Stripchat will undoubtedly provide fodder to anyone eager to write him off as biased or in the pocket of the porn lobby, for Ley, that tradeoff is worth it. “If we want to help [anxious porn consumers], we have to go to them,” he says. “And this is how we do that.”
Biased? Ley reminds us of the infamous tobacco doctors, and the Sexual health Alliance remind us of the Tobacco Institute.
COI #2 David Ley is being paid to debunk porn and sex addiction. At the end of this Psychology Today blog post Ley states:
“Disclosure: David Ley has provided testimony in legal cases involving claims of sex addiction.”
In 2019 David Ley’s new website offered his well-compensated “debunking” services:
David J. Ley, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and AASECT-certified supervisor of sex therapy, based in Albuquerque, NM. He has provided expert witness and forensic testimony in a number of cases around the United States. Dr. Ley is regarded as an expert in debunking claims of sexual addiction, and has been certified as an expert witness on this topic. He has testified in state and federal courts.
Contact him to obtain his fee schedule and arrange an appointment to discuss your interest.
COI #3: Ley makes money selling two books that deny sex and porn addiction (“The Myth of Sex Addiction,” 2012 and “Ethical Porn for Dicks,” 2016). Pornhub (which is owned by porn giant MindGeek) is one of the five back-cover endorsements listed for Ley’s 2016 book about porn:
Note: PornHub was the second Twitter account to retweet RealYBOP’s initial tweet announcing its “expert” website, suggesting a coordinated effort between PornHub and the RealYBOP experts. Wow!
COI #4: Finally, David Ley makes money via CEU seminars, where he promotes the addiction-deniers’ ideology set forth in his two books (which recklessly(?) ignores dozens of studies and the significance of the new Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder diagnosis in the World Health Organization’s diagnostic manual). Ley is compensated for his many talks featuring his biased views of porn. In this 2019 presentation Ley appears to support and promote adolescent porn use: Developing Positive Sexuality and Responsible Pornography Use in Adolescents.
Updates:
Update (Summer, 2019): On May 8, 2019 Donald Hilton, MD filed a defamation per se lawsuit against Nicole Prause & Liberos LLC. On July 24, 2019 Donald Hilton amended his defamation complaint to highlight (1) a malicious Texas Board of Medical Examiners complaint, (2) false accusations that Dr. Hilton had falsified his credentials, and (3) affidavits from 9 other Prause victims of similar harassment & defamation (John Adler, MD, Gary Wilson, Alexander Rhodes, Staci Sprout, LICSW, Linda Hatch, PhD, Bradley Green, PhD, Stefanie Carnes, PhD, Geoff Goodman, PhD, Laila Haddad.)
Update (October, 2019): On October 23, 2019 Alexander Rhodes (founder of reddit/nofap and NoFap.com) filed a defamation lawsuit against Nicole R Prause and Liberos LLC. See the court docket here. See this page for three primary court documents filed by Rhodes: NoFap founder Alexander Rhodes defamation lawsuit against Nicole Prause / Liberos.
(November, 2019): Finally, some accurate media coverage on serial false accuser, defamer, harasser, trademark infringer, Nicole Prause: “Alex Rhodes of Porn Addiction Support Group ‘NoFap’ Sues Obsessed Pro-Porn Sexologist for Defamation” by Megan Fox of PJ Media and “Porn wars get personal in No Nut November”, by Diana Davison of The Post Millennial. Davison also produced this 6-minute video about Prause’s egregious behaviors: “Is Porn Addictive?”, and this timeline of Prause’s harassment/false allegations: VSS Academic War Timeline.
Update (August, 2020): Gary Wilson wins lawsuit against serial harasser, defamer, cyberstalker Nicole Prause. Details – Prause’s efforts to silence Wilson foiled; her restraining order denied as frivolous & she owes substantial attorney fees in a SLAPP ruling.