MILAN, Italy — International porn superstar Rocco Siffredi has filed a lawsuit in Milan against the producers and television personalities behind the satirical news show “Le Iene” ("The Hyenas") and against performers who appeared on the show in April and May 2025, alleging “abuses and violence” on his Budapest-based sets.
According to Siffredi’s attorneys, the show gave viewers the impression that Siffredi’s sets were characterized by coercion, psychological pressure and extortion.
The lawsuit was filed against 21 defendants last summer and was amended a few weeks ago, but was only reported on Thursday by several Italian press outlets, including the prestigious Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica and Italy’s main wire service, ANSA.
Siffredi’s lawsuit — running for more than 200 pages, aiming to refute every accusation of wrongdoing aired by “Le Iene” — points out that none of the accusations have ever resulted in criminal charges.
The plaintiffs also volunteered hard drives with 500GB of data concerning the shoots in question, which they maintain prove that no illegal acts took place.
Siffredi’s attorneys, led by Rossella Gallo, also stated that some of the models featured by “Le Iene”, who made allegations of abuse, gave different accounts of the shoots in previous interviews.
La Repubblica reported that Siffredi had told his legal team the broadcasts were the product of a “carefully orchestrated campaign to sling mud at me.”
PornCrush communicated with Siffredi on Thursday and he stated he cannot comment at this time on the ongoing legal proceedings.
ANSA reported that a spokesperson for the “Le Iene” producers stated they had “acted correctly" and “were confident that ‘the truth will be established’.”
A Satyrical News Program vs. Italian Porn’s ‘Sacred Cow’
“Le Iene”’s personality, Roberta Rei, presented segments concerning Siffredi on several episodes broadcast on Italia 1 and online starting April 15, 2025, and ending in May.
The show featured 16 interviews with female performers, some of whose anonymity was protected during the broadcast. Several of the women spoke of consent and boundary violations on Siffredi's sets, including extremely unsafe working conditions.
Performer Marika Milani, who had been featured as a guest star with amateur men in Siffredi's reality TV show "Hard Academy" (basically “Italy’s Next Porn Star,” with male and female editions), told "Le Iene" that she found herself "with 40 guys in front of me and I felt disgusted. They were all around me, and then they hurt me because they were inexperienced and violent." After the show aired, British performer Scarlett Jones commented on a (since deleted) Instagram Story about her experiences shooting for Siffredi, "Hard to film, harder to share… I wish our voices were enough to enact real change."
The "Le Iene" segments also included an interview with Siffredi, which the adult performer now alleges was deceptively edited. The lawsuit notes an instance of Siffredi in tears over the hospitalization of his son, which was allegedly edited to appear as a reaction to the accusations.
“Le Iene” is not a conventional news or journalistic show. A long-running program on Italian television that has gone through several evolutions and presenters, the show originated in 1997 as a clone of the Argentine satirical news show “CQC” (“Caiga Quien Caiga,” Spanish for “Let Whoever Falls, Fall”).
Like “CQC,” “Le Iene” features TV presenters dressed like the protagonists of Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” with black suits, skinny ties and Ray Ban sunglasses. “Le Iene” is also the Italian title for “Reservoir Dogs.” Closely following the popular Argentine original, versions of the show aired in Spain, France, Chile, Brazil, Portugal, Israel and the Netherlands, peaking in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The show features satirical content about political figures of the moment, comedy sketches, hidden cameras, “Punked”-style pranks of famous people, and eventually exposés focusing on scammers and scandalous media figures.
In the often-politicized Italian media landscape, “Le Iene” is seen as an equal-opportunity mocker, not obviously aligned with broader conservative or progressive agendas. Sources familiar with the Italian media landscape described “Le Iene” to Porn Crush as “transgressive,” in the now-dated, in-your-face, Gen-X sense of the word. Crucially, they pointed out that “Le Iene” would not be seen in Italy as having an anti-sex work or pro-porn censorship corporate mandate, or any overarching SWERF feminist agenda.
It seems more likely that Siffredi was chosen as a “Le Iene” target for his status as a “sacred cow” in mainstream Italian culture, by far the best known male porn star — and possibly porn performer, period — in the country.
Over the last few years Siffredi has also diversified with popular reality shows (“Hard Academy"), sex education books, a Netflix limited-edition biopic series (“Supersex,” streaming worldwide), and even a touring stage show of his one-man monologue show playing to sold-out audiences around the peninsula.
Siffredi’s studio is based on a sprawling campus in Budapest, Hungary. Among other reasons, the location reflects the hypocrisy of Italian law regarding adult content. Porn is technically legal to produce in Italy, but the pro-censorship lobby (largely conservative Catholic Italy) has instituted a “tassa etica” (ethical tax) that makes actual production impossible. A current campaign led by stars like Valentina Nappi is seeking to abolish the "tassa etica."
'A Flood of Sore Losers'
ANSA reported on Thursday that the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office “has opened a defamation case against all the accused and will then proceed with further investigation.”
The Italian legal figure of “difamazione” (defamation) concerns false and harmful statements presented as fact, and is considered an “offense against one’s honor.” Italian law protects the right to criticism and the right to report, and, since 2021, to issue insults (a lesser, civil offense carved out of defamation). The commonly presented “Truth Defense” against defamation hinges on proving the truth of the harmful statement.
Besides civil liability, Article 595 of Italy’s Criminal Code establishes that defamation committed through the press is a criminal offense, punishable by six months to three years imprisonment, plus fines.
The “La Iene” segments prominently feature the testimony of British podcaster Tommie MacDonald, a former porn producer and webmaster (most notably as the business partner/manager/cameraman of British performer Harriet Sugarcookie) who has in the last few years become an outspoken critic of the the adult industry. MacDonald has been praised as an ally by religiously motivated pro-censorship organization Exodus Cry, who stated in their 2023 report seeking donors that “in a surprising turn of events, this year porn producer Tommie MacDonald discovered the truth about trafficking in the porn industry after hearing us sound the alarm on this reality.”
“He left the industry and is now using his platform to expose traffickers and exploiters in porn,” the anti-porn ministry added.
MacDonald had conducted a series of lengthy interviews with adult performers in 2022 and 2023, which he published on his YouTube channel, and had singled out Siffredi and French audition-porn producer Pierre Woodman as egregious examples of industry abuse. MacDonald promoted his channel by appearing in popular Hungarian politics YouTube Stream Partizan, where he was billed as a “porn industry whistleblower.”
After appearing on “La Iene” recapping his 2023 YouTube accusations against Siffredi for a much larger audience, MacDonald published a post on his Instagram story stating, “When I started this journey 2.5 years ago I never imagined I’d be talking about it on Italian TV. So proud of @_robertarei_’s fearless reporting and for making the victims [sic] voices truly heard. This is a big step towards changing how people view sex workers and one day getting some justice for victims of bad actors in Budapest’s p*rn industry.”
During his "La Iene" discharge, according to Italian press reports, Siffredi claimed MacDonald was a paid tool in a conspiracy to take him down, involving rivals in the competitive Central Europe studio scene.
After last year’s broadcast, some well-known Italian performers offered testimonies that were viewed as countering “Le Iene”’s exclusively damning account. Former Rocco protegé Malena — who had given a lengthy interview to “Le Iene” for their broadcast — clarified that she sympathized with girls sharing their experiences on the program but in her case, shooting with Rocco things had been different.
“I filmed on a set where when I raised my hand, or I complained, everything stopped,” Malena told an interviewer.
Award-winning performer and activist Valentina Nappi, who was also critical of how the “Le Iene” broadcast had been sensationalized, appeared on a podcast in November to offer a much more nuanced take on the show, Siffredi’s practices, and porn set culture in general.
In the current attention-grabbing, TikTok clip culture, “Le Iene,” Nappi concluded, had chosen to highlight a “marea di rosiconi” (a flood of haters).
