Daughter Feared Death From Makers of Porn Films, Mother Testifies

Traci Lords, fearing for her life, pleaded with her mother not to reveal that she was underage when she made many of her films, the porn star’s mother testified Wednesday.

“She told me the people she was involved with would kill her,” Patricia Briceland said.

“She told me to keep my mouth shut or I would get her in terrible trouble,” Briceland added.

Briceland testified in the third week of the trial of Rubin Gottesman, a Woodland Hills resident charged with distributing child pornography. Prosecutors allege he sent Lords’ videotapes through the mail and also distributed obscene material through his Van Nuys business, X-Citement Video.

Gottesman, 56, is also charged with violating federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization statutes for allegedly conducting a racketeering enterprise by means of interstate sales of obscene videotapes.

Under the RICO statute, prosecutors will try to seize the property Gottesman and his companies acquired with the profits of the alleged illegal activity.

According to earlier testimony, Gottesman sent the videotapes to officers and agents conducting an undercover investigation dubbed “Picture Perfect.”

Briceland was called on to testify about her daughter’s age when the latter made “Sex Shoot” and “Lust in the Fast Lane.”

“That’s my daughter, Nora,” Briceland said. “She’s definitely 16, no more.”

Change in Appearance

Lords’ appearance changed dramatically while she was making the film, the mother said.

“I can see differences in the way she presented herself, the way she spoke, her confidence, the totality of the person,” Briceland said.

The mother said her daughter got a “look in her eye. She started getting very hard, very tough after she started making the movies.”

But under cross-examination, Briceland admitted that there could be as much as a six-month margin of error in her calculations about her daughter’s age.

“When she was 16, she still was pudgy in the face. Her hair was brown-colored, kind of brown with a little red in it,” the mother said.

The bespectacled Briceland, whose own red hair is worn short with bangs, said her daughter left home a few weeks before she was 16.

Within six months, the mother of three other daughters said her eldest told her that “Traci” was doing nude modeling.

During one of Lords’ visits home, Briceland said she confronted her daughter about the rumors.

Saw Some Pictures

“She said it wasn’t true. I think it started right after she left. She got involved with these people before she left and started doing it after she left,” Briceland said.

“Eventually, I did see some pictures in Penthouse (magazine). I confronted her with that. She was 17,” Briceland said.

Asked if she told her daughter to stop that kind of work, Briceland said: “Of course.”

But she said her daughter refused.

“I told Nora if she didn’t stop, I would go to the police, I would go to Penthouse,” Briceland said.

But after Nora expressed her fears, Briceland said she decided to “keep the lines of communication open” with her daughter.

“I did nothing in the legal sense,” she said.