Gene Ross from www.adultfyi.com - Lara Roxx has her version of the story. Darren James, who wound up suing Sharon Mitchell, has his story. So does Sharon Mitchell. But we'll probably never know the real facts behind an HIV outbreak in the adult industry in 2004. All we know is the blame continues to be put squarely on the shoulders of Darren James.

I gave Mitchell what I thought was a plausible version of a timeline at a performers meeting during that outbreak and she stopped talking to me after that. I guess my version didn't support the tidy one that the now defunct AIM had put out there.

Having been shut down and put out of its misery for a number of different reasons including a mismanagement of purse strings, AIM no longer has that halo to hide under, and so you'd have to be suspicious of any of their campfire yarns.

The reason this is coming up again is that a Lara Roxx documentary was shown at a Canadian film exhibit recently. That means Roxx is back in the news. Except for the fact that Roxx was later admitted to a psychiatric hospital, it's still pretty much the same-old poppycock and bull waddle being regurgitated seven years later. Roxx continues to be portrayed as the innocent young martyr, the naïf who was taken advantage of by the unscrupulous porn industry.

The director of the Roxx documentary, Mia Donovan, a former stripper, comments, "Lara takes full responsibility for her choices, however, in 20/20 hindsight she recognizes how naïve she was back then in 2004. Unfortunately her naivety and her inability to set firm boundaries for herself once she got to L.A made her extremely vulnerable and she did fall in with a group of agents and producers that were experts at manipulating girls into going way beyond their comfort zone and even beyond that."

Trust me on a couple of key points when it comes to Roxx.

I talked to her when this story broke, and she was as battle hardened as General Patton. She had been a stripper since the age of 16 and had more than her share of sugar daddies. There was no innocence at all in that cold voice. All Roxx wanted to know was how much money she was getting for her interview with me. She hung up the phone which will give you some idea of my answer.

And was the porn industry as unscrupulous as Donovan says?

If you ever got a look at Roxx up close, you'd be correct in thinking that no one in his right mind would be falling over himself to have her in a movie much less connive her into performing forbidden rites. And then there's that butt full of puss, pimples, blisters and rashes which Roxx brought to her first porn shoot.

Roxx had an answer for that. She claimed she got it after a wax job. What was she doing, simonizing her ass? Later, she changed that story.

If you listen to Shelley Lubben's spin, Roxx suffered the break out the day AFTER performing her first sex scene in Los Angeles [a double anal with James and Marc Anthony].

But because we have those butt pics taken DURING the scene as evidence, even Lubben and Roxx can't agree on whether the whole thing is a wax job or a con job.

Performer Dick Tracey who happened to be on that shoot, confirmed that Roxx already had that condition when she worked with James and Anthony.

True, Roxx wasted her valuable time talking to me, but other mainstream media like Maury Povich, ABC and Entertainment Tonight paid what she asked for. Roxx had it down pat. On cue, she'd look elfin, sad, wasted and forlorn. Exactly the same way "little girl lost" Alexandria Quinn did when she sat in a kid's playground on a swing looking off into the Canadian wilderness.

The evil porn industry also destroyed Quinn? Never mind the fact that she was already sexually psychotic. I say that in a good way.

Roxx, who draws her porn name from the character Lara Croft and the fact that she likes jewelry, claimed in an interview with the Montreal Mirror how she started in the world of adult entertainment as a dancer in clubs like SuperSexe, where she'd earn "$400 or $500 a day. But the lure of more money beckoned.

"I thought that the money I was making with 10 customers, I could make that with one guy." Her first film experience, on January 10 2004, was with local producer Bruno B.

"I was managing myself back then, and at first it went well," says Roxx.

"He was really nice, and we spoke for 45 minutes before he told me stuff like exactly how big his penis was. He had the condom but he came on my face, which was really disgusting. But I felt I had to get used to that if I was going to be in porn for two or three years."

Roxx found herself pulling in $2,000 for a few hours' work a week, and spending much of the loot on consumer goods.

She decorated her room and bought a lot of nice clothes, CDs, a CD player and super Koss speakers.

"It's a real nice room now but I'm not allowed on that property because my mom kind of kicked me out with the assistance of the cops," Roxx told the newspaper. "If I go back there I could get arrested."

But Roxx claims she also had her mother's blessings to have hardcore sex on camera.

"A the time, she thought that if you feel comfortable with what you're doing, it's okay. I wasn't comfortable but I thought I was, and I was convincing myself that I was. But I wasn't on drugs to have to do it. It was me talking to myself, like, 'Come on, you can do it.'

"I felt that it was safe. I thought everything would go well for me."

Roxx's ex-boyfriend, photographer Denis Lefebvre introduced her to manager Daniel Perreault. Perreault convinced her that it wasn't worth his time to represent her if she insisted on doing condoms only.

At Perreault's home studio, Roxx filmed her first-ever anal scene with Darren James on February 10, 2004.

"James really didn't like me," she recalls of the encounter.

"I thought he was really ugly and I didn't want to do it with him," says Roxx, who has a lot of room to talk.

"I'm attracted to black men but not Darren James, he's just not cute and he has an ugly face. We did the scene and it just got worse. I was trying to take my time to relax and feel safe about it and he was just trying to get it done, in and out."

Although Roxx filmed 15 scenes in 10 weeks, she felt she could earn more in Los Angeles, so after making her way down there she found that Marc Anthony wanted her for another film starring James.

"I was like, 'Oh my God, we worked together and [James] hated me and now we're going to have to work with each other again.' And then I was actually happy because I thought they were never going to hire me again."

Upon arriving on the set she was told that she'd have to do a double anal or else not get the scene. Her resistance was worn down fast.

"I felt like I was doing something wrong, that they were the professionals and I was the rookie and I'm not supposed to be asking all these questions before the shoot. Maybe I'm just supposed to open my legs and that's all they want in this industry. That's one of the things I intend to change. I want to change it so the girl gets more respect than that."

Roxx's lawyer at the time, Daniel Lighter said there's no doubt that she got the infection from James, and that viral load tests revealed that James had the infection longer than her.  There was talk about all kinds of lawsuits but none transpired. Probably for this reason:

No one has anyone produced a copy of Roxx's HIV test from that Canadian shoot with James in February, 2004. James allegedly confided to at least one producer that he worked for to say that he didn't get HIV in Brazil as was reported.

"I've done something I shouldn't have done," James is quoted as saying, that he probably got it in Canada.

In my conversation with Sharon Mitchell, she denied having any knowledge of that scene James shot with Roxx in Canada. 

Roxx also wound up complaining, sarcastically, that purportedly "sympathetic porn industry managers" snatched up the rights to her Web site, www.lararoxx.com 
She wanted to use it as a tool to start her foundation and make it an AIDS awareness site. Except it's now being used as a portal for free porn.

James, who must be at least 47 or so by now, was interviewed by the LA Times some time ago. Speaking at his attorney's office, James said he hoped his story would spur the industry to require condoms. James explained how he faithfully executed the duties of a porn performer by following regular testing procedures. At the pinnacle of his prowess, James was traveling to foreign countries to shoot films, sometimes working six days a week and two or three scenes a day.

"You're like Superman. Especially with the amount of work that I had? It was nonstop," James said.

"I'm thinking, I'm invincible. That's just the way our mentality was. It was, you get the test, you're clean, not realizing that in between the tests, and after the tests, you know, other people, you don't know what they're doing."

Stories were out there that Roxx had been an escort in Canada long before she touched on American soil. I know I've told this story but it bears repeating.

I was at KSEX talking to Max Hardcore before any of this story broke. During our conversation, Max got a call on his cell phone telling him there was a new girl in town from Canada and if he wanted to, to go to such and such motel and she'd give him a sample. Not wanting to turn down the opportunity, Max scrammed, the wind almost blowing off his cowboy hat. The new girl was Roxx and if you hold to the theory that she was a well traveled Canadian escort, this story is not implausible at all.

But the phone call that changed James' life came as he was getting ready to book tickets to Japan for an international shoot. AIM clinic officials told him he was HIV positive. And they told him they planned to release his name publicly.

James asked them not to -- in part out of concern for his parents who did not know how he made his living -- but they did so, anyway.

"It was like a hit in the gut," James said. "My whole world stops. . . .Life was pretty much over."

A Detroit native, James joined the Navy after high school, working in the construction battalion. When he left the Navy in 1989, he settled in Southern California and planned to pursue a career in law enforcement but struggled to find work.

At times, he was homeless. At one point, he lived at a friend's gym. Then, in 1997, another friend referred him to a modeling gig in the San Fernando Valley, which turned out to be a porn shoot.

The shoot went well, and James was hired for more scenes. In the beginning, he worked as a standby performer without getting credit, making little money. But by 2004 he was earning a good living. Then he got the HIV diagnosis.

Distraught, James bought a bus ticket to Tijuana, planning to disappear. But the news spread quickly. In Mexico, he saw footage with a photo of himself on TV smirking as if, he said, he was smirking at the situation.

James then tried to kill himself but woke up days later in a hospital near San Diego. It took him months to recover. He later found out that his mother learned about his diagnosis, and his porn career, on TV at her church.

In 2005, James sued the AIM clinic and several of its officials, including Mitchell, alleging medical negligence and invasion of privacy. His suicide attempt and the turmoil caused by disclosure of his name are among the lawsuit's contentions. The case was settled out of court under terms James has never discussed.

James has worked as a security guard since, but says his porn past and HIV-positive status have cost him some jobs when he's recognized.

Roxx got her say on KSEX when, accompanied by Mia Donovan, she appeared on Anita Cannibal's show several years ago.

Roxx admitted she worked with fake ID's up in Canada, principally in the suburbs of Quebec and Montreal. Roxx, though, made a point of saying she was 21 when she started doing movies.

During her time in the adult industry Roxx shot 18 scenes over a two-month stretch, 15 of those in Canada and three in Los Angeles.

Roxx got ELIZA tested in Canada. And once she arrived in Los Angeles, Roxx, apparently forgetting her earlier story about having a wax job, talked about how she discovered huge zits on her ass.

"They were painful but I wasn't thinking about HIV," she said.

"As soon as I got off the plane I got an AIM test," she stated.

If Roxx had tested negative, then she would have had to have at least one more test to come up with the positive results. If she discovered her condition three weeks later, why would she have had that second test a week before her window was up?

And Shelley Lubben's story about Roxx discovering the pustules only confuses the time line issue more than it serves to explain it.

We know that Roxx already had the condition when she worked with James.

Yet, describing Roxx getting up the next day, Lubben says this: "[Roxx] woke up with sores and an infection that gave her no other choice then to cancel the shoots she had scheduled to perform that day.

"Once again, the following morning she woke up with the same symptoms and had to cancel more shoots that her agent had booked for her and this cycle continued well into the next few weeks. Rather then working and making money she found herself growing deeper in debt as she rested and waited for her health to get better so that she could get back to the plan, which was to make a minimum of $30,000 to bring back to Montreal.

"After about three weeks of canceling shoots because of the visible sores on her body and the fatigue she experienced which she initially attributed to a case of mononucleosis, she received an alarming call from one of her agents who informed her that one of the two male performers she worked with had just tested positive for HIV. At that moment she already knew the verdict. She was also HIV positive."

Roxx insists she was infected with HIV on a TT Boy shoot when she worked with James and Marc Anthony. Other than the Montreal Mirror, Roxx never told anyone else that she had worked with James two months earlier in Canada.

Either way, Roxx said she came to Los Angeles with the idea she'd make $20,000 to $30,000. Instead, she wound up $5,000 in debt. TT Boy, himself, was later fined by the state of California, for anywhere between $30,000 and $90,000 depending who you talk to.

"I had big plans at the outset," said Roxx. Her original intention was to come to California, part of that decision based on the fact that she had web content stolen from her.

"I thought I'd just go to California and make loads of money. I was hungry- I was robbed."

According to Cannibal, medical costs for treating HIV could amount to as much as $2,600,000, and so she asked Roxx if she had taken legal action against TT Boy.

"I was told I should," said Roxx but hesitated because she felt it would be bad karma for her to do so.

"I don't want to sue," she continued. "What goes around comes around. I want their karma to hit them."

Roxx didn't sue, not because of karma, but because her story would never hold up in court.