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Parents to pay $45,000 for trashing 43-year-old son’s VHS porn collection

David Werking claimed to have an emotional attachment worth $30,000 to his porn films like ‘Snatched to the Future’.

U.S. District Judge, Paul Maloney, obviously empathises, as David Werking is set to receive roughly $30,000 from his parents to recoup the loss of his destroyed VHS porn collection.

David’s parents, Beth and Paul Werking are to pay exactly $30,441.54 to their son in addition to paying his legal fees, which accumulate to more than $14,500, according to court records.

VHS and DVDs of porn are a rare commodity nowadays.
Image: Boing Boing

Who said that suburbia is dull? Apparently not in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

David Werking, 43 and living in Indiana initially won the lawsuit in December 2020, however the judge delayed the ruling on damages until last week.

According to emails, this ordeal began when David’s parents threw away numerous boxes of his porn and sex toys that he left behind in their home after they kicked him out.

He moved back in with them for 10 months post divorce, but apparently he had previously caused a domestic disturbance back in August 2017 in which the police were involved.

Two days later (according to emails from his father), they found David on the streets and took him to a Christian ministry centre called LOVE Inc.

That same day the porn collection was discovered and, abiding by their Christian values, they started to dispose of it.

Emails also outline that David had asked multiple times for his porn collection back.

A police investigator’s report from December indicates that David’s parents did return some of his stuff to him. However, like any dedicated antiquarian, he noticed collectables missing to which his parents, Beth and Paul, admitted they had destroyed the items.

David claimed these items equated to $10,000 in value in addition to his emotional attachment to them would be worth $30,000.

Being the devout Christians they are, Beth and Paul had asked their son to not bring porn into the house, according to phone call between Beth and an investigator.

The email battle between David and his parents extends over a period of years and is primarily about his divorce, his inability to find work or an apartment and of course, their rejection of his extensive porn collection.

In one email, Paul Werking listed some of the genres he claims he found in his son’s porn trove including incest, bestiality, slavery, torture and rape.

I fully endorse kinks and sexual discovery, but I’m with the parents on this one – Yikes!

Paul stated in an email to David in March 2018: “Any civilization that tolerates or promotes these acts will not survive. Any individual that puts this garbage into his mind (whether or not he commits these acts) will also suffer,”

According to court documents, David made things worse for himself – through an extremely detailed inventory of the thousands of DVDs and VHS tapes.

He says it is difficult to find prices for many of the listings due to how long ago they were made and with the dissolving of various studios.

Some of the many titles from David Werking's inventory.
Image: Vice

Director of the Erotic Heritage Museum, Victoria Hartmann, was impressed by the quantity of titles and sex toy items documented by David, and praised him for his extensive inventory.

Well, David Werking. I guess it didn’t werk out for you. If all your problematic porn was so valuable, you should have hauled it with you to Indiana.