The defendants have not yet responded to the lawsuit, or commented on it publicly. It has previously been reported that Elden was paid $250.Įlden is seeking damages of at least $150,000 from each of the 15 defendants, plus costs, and asks that the case be tried with a jury. It claims Elden was never paid for appearing on the cover, and that his parents never signed a release form for the image, which was shot specifically for the album cover. The lawsuit claims the image is “sexually graphic”, and says it makes Elden resemble “a sex worker – grabbing for a dollar bill”. Elden is asking for damages from multiple defendants.The lawsuit accuses the defendants of “commercial child sexual exploitation of him from while he was a minor to the present day … defendants knowingly produced, possessed and advertised commercial child pornography depicting Spencer”.Įlden, who was four months old when the image was made, says he has suffered “lifelong damages” from the 1991 album cover, including “extreme and permanent emotional distress with physical manifestations”, plus loss of education, wages, and “enjoyment of life”. RELATED: How Old 100 Iconic Stars Would Be If They Were Alive Today. But late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain said in a 1991 interview with Hot Metal that the only sticker he would use was one that said, "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile." The record company released the album without any censoring.
As Snopes points out, Michael Azerrad's book Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana reports that art director Robert Fisher also brought up the idea of censoring the image by airbrushing out the nudity. The BBC reports that the lawsuit also claims that Nirvana said a sticker would be used to cover Elden's genitals, but that didn't happen. "Neither Spencer nor his legal guardians ever signed a release authorizing the use of any images of Spencer or of his likeness, and certainly not of commercial child pornography depicting him," the lawsuit reads, according to Variety. The lawsuit also claims that Elden's parents did not sign a release granting the image to be used for the album cover. As Variety notes, non-sexualized images of babies are not generally considered to be pornography. Lewis, claims that the digital inclusion of the money dangling in front of him makes baby Elden appear "like a sex worker," which he argues makes the image child pornography. As reported by Variety, Elden's lawyer, Robert Y.
0 kommentar(er)
