Note: CleanFlicks has disputed much of the initial media reports cited here. See our update.
The co-founder of CleanFlicks, a video editing service once used by many Christians, has been arrested in Utah for allegedly paying a 14-year-old girl for sex.
Daniel Thompson, who ran CleanFlicks till the courts shut it down in 2006, had more recently operated Flix Club, a family-friendly edited-movie video business in Orem, Utah. He was arrested last Thursday on two charges of forcible sexual abuse and two charges of forcible sexual activity with a 14-year-old. Thompson is out on bail.
Thompson's business partner at Flix Club, Isaac Lifferth, was also arrested on similar charges.
Thompson reportedly told police that Flix Club, which carried videos in which objectionable content had been edited out, was only a front, and that he and Lifferth were also involved in making and distributing porn movies.
Flix Club was forced to close last year after a federal court ruled that movie-editing businesses violated U.S. copyright law when they "sanitized" films by removing nudity, sex, profanity, and other objectionable content.
According to police reports, Thompson and Lifferth allegedly paid two 14-year-old girls $20 each to perform oral sex, and Lifferth allegedly had intercourse with a 16-year-old girl multiple times, including in the offices at Flix Club.
"I would have never suspected there was other stuff going on," the father of the 16-year-old told the Daily Herald in Provo. "I guess I didn't know Daniel. He always seemed like a real decent guy."
Obviously not. USA Today blogged several news items about the story under the title, "Clean Flicks, dirty man?"
Ironically, and perhaps prophetically, Thompson's MySpace page includes the tagline, "Somewhere in the valley between Good and Evil." On that same page, for his "status" - where most people write something like "single" or "married" - Thompson wrote "Swinger."
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