Hadley Viscara Accuses Derek Hay of Abuse in Emotional Testimony

LOS ANGELES—Fighting back tears, adult starlet Hadley Viscara today accused LA Direct Models owner Derek Hay of sexual assault during the fifth day of an administrative hearing at the California Labor Commissioner’s Office in the case filed by five adult performers who claim the agency and Hay repeatedly took advantage of them. Hay has denied all the allegations and vowed, “The complaint will be vigorously defended.” Special Hearing Officer Patricia Salazar presided over the hearing, held at the downtown Los Angeles office of the Department of Industrial Relations Division of Labor Standards Enforcement for the State of California. Viscara, who now goes by the name Hadley Mason, at times struggled with her emotions as she told Salazar in a cracking voice that Hay sexually assaulted her on Aug. 23, 2017, and again on Aug. 27 of that same year. In the first instance, Viscara detailed how she agreed to join Hay after he asked her to have dinner with him at Aria Hotel in Las Vegas. “I thought it was going to be an agent/client dinner at Aria and not something romantic,” she said. “I got pretty drunk. … After dinner Derek drove back to his house. He told me to come in and he went into his room and I followed him in and then he came from behind the armchair with his pants off, revealing his erection.” After the alleged assault, Viscara didn’t report the incident but only told her roommate about it, out of fear of how Hay would react if she told others. But just four days later, Viscara was again sexually assaulted by Hay, she told the judge as she continued to choke back tears. In this instance, she had joined fellow LA Direct starlet Zoe Parker at a bar at Sapphire Las Vegas where they drank several shots of tequila before agreeing to sleep off the alcohol back at Hay’s Las Vegas home, where Parker was staying. “Zoe and I walked in and Derek came out of his room and he took me by the arms and dragged me into his room and pushed me down on the bed,” she recalled. “A couple of minutes of him assaulting me, I said, ‘I don’t want to do this. Can I go back to sleep with Zoe?’ And he said, ‘Of course.’” Viscara said she felt trapped by Hay, who seemingly controlled all aspects of her life and could easily end her career in the adult industry. “I was afraid. He was still my agent. He controlled my work, my money, my life. You just don’t cross Derek,” she said. When cross examined about whether she had a sexual relationship with Hay, Viscara asserts that she does not date men and is married to another woman. Hay’s attorney, Richard W. Freeman Jr., has said that once Allan B. Gelbard, the petitioners’ attorney, completes his case, he will present evidence to refute many of the allegations against his client. The testimony echoed Monday’s hearing, at which adult starlet Sofi Ryan told of a brief relationship with Hay which resulted in Hay sexually assaulting her in a car during a trip from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Ryan alleged that Hay threatened to leave her to die in the desert. She also asserted that he then repeatedly harassed her after she began dating another man. Both women also accused Hay and LA Direct of charging exorbitant kill fees when they were unwilling or unable to do shoots booked by the agency, and were also required to pay a variety of other fees and costs that they believed were meant to further cut into the money they had earned. Viscara noted that in one instance she didn’t realize until later that she was being charged for flights from Arizona to Las Vegas, then from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, along with fees for a photographer and medical costs for a visit to a dermatologist that was arranged by Hay. Earlier this week the judge heard more testimony from Viscara as well as former LA Direct Models clients Charlotte Cross, Andi Rye and Shay Evans. After the hearing, Freeman said that all fees, including kill fees that were charged to its talent, were “reasonable costs” that were incurred by LA Direct as part of its effort to book or support its models. “There is a certain standard that Derek Hay and Direct Models helped initiate long ago that eliminated the practice of studio, producers and directors over summoning performers and then not needing them, then sending them away without compensation,” Freeman said. “Correspondingly, it standardized the fee that was charged by a studio, producer and director when a performer canceled a shoot at the last minute, and it was beneficial to the performer or the talent because it eliminated the possibility that they would be charged higher amounts than the producer, the director or studio had incurred to assemble everybody for a shoot that didn’t happen.” The hearing is scheduled to resume on Nov. 4.