Joel Franco was Channel 7’s social media whiz. Then came the sex allegations on Twitter

Joel Franco is a name that South Florida millennials and gen-z-ers easily recognize. The TV journalist had a social media following of more than 50,000 people and a viewership of millions.

But that changed this past week after at least seven women publicly took to social media to share their stories, alleging that Franco, a social media producer at WSVN Channel 7 News, had taken advantage of them sexually when he was younger — in some cases when they were underage. One woman said he was 19 and she was 14 when he brought her to an abandoned building for sex.

Recent days also saw a spotlight shone on past posts that seemingly made light of the act of rape, ones like: “Just imagine me whispering in your ear from behind. Then raping u.”

At Channel 7, Franco’s job entailed maintaining the newsroom’s social media account and occasionally reporting from the street. Thanks to his large social media following, his influence grew until he left the station abruptly.

“I can confirm that Joel no longer works for WSVN,” station spokeswoman Lily Pardo told the Miami Herald on Friday. She declined to say if he resigned or was fired.

Franco could not be reached for comment as one cell phone number listed as his is disabled and he has yet to respond to a message left on another. He did not respond to a direct message on social media. A tweet pinned at the top of his Twitter account says allegations about him are “NOT true.”

A day after the Miami Herald published this story on its website, Franco posted a series of tweets about the allegations of underage sexual abuse and the past rape comments he had made.

“I’m going to comment on a few points. I am not a rapist. I have never sexually assaulted anyone,” Franco, 24, tweeted. “I understand my 2013 tweets made you believe otherwise. I was a fucking idiot. I wanted attention in any way possible. They were jokes to me at the time.”

Franco’s exit, first reported by Miami New Times, was set in motion by an unrelated event — his arrest last Sunday while covering protests spurred by the violent death of George Floyd. The arrest of a practicing journalist for covering a protest (the charge was later dropped) got plenty of attention — and prompted women to post online of their alleged encounters with him when they were very young.

The Miami Herald spoke to four women, all of whom wish to remain anonymous, who said he sexually abused, harassed or manipulated them when they were underage, before his stint at Channel 7.

One of the women said she has contacted Miami-Dade police’s Special Victims Bureau. She said Franco was legally an adult when the encounters occurred. Franco has not been criminally charged.

One of the women said she and Franco were both underage, but for the others, their alleged encounters began when he was 17 or 18 years old and continued until his early 20s.

There is no evidence at this time that Franco used his cachet as a Channel 7 employee to entice underage girls. The station did not address questions about whether anyone complained directly to managers, or whether disturbing posts about his behavior had come to management’s attention and, if so, when.

What vetting the station did before hiring Franco in 2018 is also not known, even though at the time all of his tweets regarding rape and dating minors were still public and not yet deleted.

It is routine practice at large companies to comb through an applicant’s social media account in advance of extending a job offer.

Franco was the kind of hire a station would make to appeal to a younger audience. Attracting young viewers, people who get their news almost exclusively via a smartphone, is a steep challenge for traditional media, including local TV news outlets.

His rapid rise and sudden fall illustrates the power of social media to elevate an obscure but ambitious teenager to digital prominence — and then to dismantle his or her career in the course of a week.

Early success

Franco was little known in 2011, but that was going to change quickly. At 16, he set out to make himself a newsman.

He started an organization called World Must Wake Up. He set up a website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channel dedicated to product releases, conspiracy theories, and national and local news events.

“The purpose of this channel is to show everyone the truth! I want everyone to share my videos to make some go viral and that would be awesome because, then hundreds of thousands to millions would know the message and the Illuminati would be more exposed!” Franco’s YouTube page said at the time.

By 2012, his videos had reached nearly five million views and he had a following of more than 10,000 people across all his platforms.

His most popular video at the time, with 3.2 million views, was called “Proof Obama is the Antichrist.” Many of his videos dealt with conspiracies.

He also highlighted like-minded YouTube channels, including that of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

At the time, Franco’s audience were teenagers, pre-teens and kids. They commented on his videos, liked his posts and shared his pictures.

He attended American Senior High School through 2013 until leaving early, later earning his GED. He also briefly attended Miami Dade College but dropped out, according to reporting from the college paper The Reporter.

Also in 2013, Franco found his groove and to his followers become a “news reporter guy.”

Franco’s aunt, Teresita Rusindo, said he is “obsessed” with journalism and has always prioritized it.

He also ran a then-personal account where he tweeted about his daily life and frequently about sex.

Franco was on the cusp of turning 18 in September 2013 when he posted tweets that were often explicit.

One read: “#JoelFrancoPickUpLines girl I’m hoping they legalize rape now ;),” and another saying, “If you tease me and it leads to nothing I’ll h8 [hate] you. Teasing is sexy when it leads to something ;).”

“They were obviously inappropriate and not a reflection of who I am today,” he said. “Twitter at the time, as I like to say, was like a different atmosphere. I was an immature, stupid kid at the time. I was trying to get attention....”

Days after his 18th birthday, Franco was asked on an online question-and-answer platform what the youngest girl he would date was. He said 16.

Two days later, someone commented that it was “too bad” he was 18 because she was an interested 16-year-old. He replied “It’s actually under 16 that’s illegal.”

The legally recognized age of consent in Florida is 18. State law provides an age-gap provision that allows someone 16 or 17 to legally consent to sexual conduct with a person between the ages of 16 and 23.

Aside from the tweets about dating a minor, Franco also regularly tweeted about sex and women, sometimes sharing explicit photos.

He also continued his rape comments by tweeting in a now deleted conversation, “yes bc [because] I’m a rapist.”

Although most of these tweets were later deleted and Franco years later said they were “made as a joke…”, four women say he didn’t just look for 16-year-olds. He allegedly found them younger, 13 to 14.

‘I was scared.’

Four women spoke to the Miami Herald about their encounters with Franco when they were underage. Their names have been changed to protect their identities.

“Isabelle” was the first of the four to intersect with Franco.

They started dating in 2010 before he became a known Miami figure to teenagers. She was a 13-year-old middle school eighth grader, and he was a 15-year-old high school freshman or sophomore.

“He was very obsessive, very possessive, very manipulative, very controlling,” she said.

The Herald obtained photos of them together from the relationship.

The two never had sex, but she said he harassed and groped her on several occasions. Franco acknowledged the relationship, and said nothing he did was inappropriate.

“He came over to my house and we were in my kitchen and I remember him sticking his hand down my pants…,” she said. “I had no idea what was going on.”

Once, the couple was in the car with her family and he put a jacket over their laps to try to touch her underneath it. The same happened in her house with her brother nearby.

Isabelle lived across the street from an abandoned home, where she said he persuaded her to go and then touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable.

She said she tried to end the relationship many times, but he blackmailed her, saying that he would release nude photos of her if she broke up with him.

In one message exchange, he threatened her “b4 [before] things get worse,” and she asked how and “does it have something to do with nudes?” He answered yes.

Franco said these messages stemmed from immaturity and desperation.

After almost a year, Isabelle said she was able to extricate herself by getting baptized at her church. She felt it was her only way out because once baptized she wasn’t allowed to date anyone not affiliated with the church.

Months later, she said he trespassed into her high school, Miami Lakes Educational Center & Technical College. She saw him across the hall wearing a borrowed school uniform and panicked. She said she contacted school police who did not follow up.

Franco said he was skipping school with friends that day and went to Miami Lakes for fun. He said he didn’t see her.

“Fiona” said she was 13 when she met Franco on Twitter in 2013, and 14 when she met him in person in 2014. He was 18 going on 19.

The first time, they went to the Parkway Regional West Medical Center, which was abandoned and coated with graffiti. He previously made a YouTube video with his friends exploring the then-abandoned hospital.

Franco said he did not take girls he connected with over social media to any abandoned spots. He called these places, such as the hospital, “sacred” because they are where he went with his friends and filmed YouTube videos.

Fiona said she performed oral sex on Franco there. She said she was 14, and he was 19. They each brought a friend.

“I saw it as normal,” she said.

William Samek, director of the Florida Sexual Abuse Treatment Program, Inc. said any significant age difference creates an imbalance of power and authority.

However, even a two-year gap when one person is in middle school and the other is in high school involves varying degrees of maturity, he said.

Multiple women described Franco’s behavior as grooming, which Samek says is when someone tries to manipulate a victim to get what he or she wants out of them.

The first time “Megan” met Franco in person was in 2013. He kept consistent with his habit of bringing girls to abandoned places.

He drove her to the abandoned Miami Marine Stadium on Key Biscayne. As a 13-year-old, she said she trusted him — she felt no reason not to.

He was 17 years old, liked by everyone she knew and was nice over Twitter and text messages.

“He was being flirtatious with me and I obviously thought that this is cool,” she said. “This man that is obviously well-known is talking to me and he has interest in me.”

They spent the outing taking photos of the stadium and in his car, where she said she performed oral sex.

He turned 18 months later, but they didn’t stop talking and meeting each other until 2015.

Going to secluded places together became a habit. They went to a tucked away part of Alligator Alley to take nature photography. They’d go to parking lots at night.

“It was very sketchy the way he would hang out with me,” Megan said. “It was always just empty places, it was never around anyone.”

She said that at the time, she consented to everything, but in retrospect she says she believes she was taken advantage of by Franco.

“It makes me sick to the stomach that I was so gullible and so easily manipulated,” she said.

When she saw other women’s stories on social media, she connected with one in particular, “Alexis,” who dated Franco for four years. Comparing stories, she asked, “Am I a victim?”

Alexis, who has since received counseling, answered yes and explained why.

This wasn’t the first time Megan and Alexis spoke. In 2015, Alexis and Franco were seeing each other when she realized he was still messaging other teenage girls, one of whom being Megan. Alexis told her she was in a relationship, which ended things between Megan and Franco.

Franco was a known character around Alexis’ middle and high school friend groups.

The first time Franco met Alexis in person was in 2014, he was 18 and she was 14. She said she told her mom she was going to the mall with her best friend. When her mom dropped her off, she ran behind a dumpster where he was waiting for her in his car.

They watched a movie, and when it got out around midnight, she asked him to drive her home.

Instead, he took her to Parkway Regional West Medical Center, the same abandoned hospital he allegedly took Fiona to.

As they were trying to enter, she said a police officer approached them and Franco ran away from her, taking her phone, which was disconnected. When they got back in the car, she asked again to be driven home, but he drove toward Miami International Airport.

Alexis said she panicked. Franco finally drove her home to the Kendall area around 4 a.m., nearly four hours after she had asked to go home the first time, she said.

They continued to date for four years, from 2014 to 2018. During this time, Franco was 18 to 22 years old, while Alexis was 13 to 17 years old. The Herald obtained photos of them together from the relationship.

Franco said he thought about the age gap at the time but felt comfortable with it because both families knew about the relationship.

She said he used to ask girls to send him photos of their naked breasts or butt with his name written on their bodies in marker. It was called a “fan sign,” and he would post these photos on his Twitter.

Franco said he shared these publicly without confirming ages.

The night before her 15th birthday, Franco rented a motel room in Hialeah Gardens to celebrate, she said.

“I was extremely uncomfortable because I thought it was going to be different,” she said. “I didn’t know it was going to be so disgusting.”

They hadn’t had sex before, and he kept trying to convince her that it was finally time, she said. When they didn’t go “all the way” the night before, he took her back the next day.

“It was three of the worst minutes of my life,” Alexis said. “I just kept making the same excuses and then I just laid there...I just went home and cried on my birthday,” she said.

Franco said this never happened.

On three different occasions when they were in a parking lot, police approached them while they were naked inside, she said, adding that the cops remarked on the age gap every time, and let them off with a warning.

“I tried to suppress that it happened because I thought I was in the wrong because I consented to all of this and didn’t speak up at the time,” she said.

Professional journalist

After seven years of building a social audience and just after Franco last made contact with the four women, he got the opportunity he had been waiting for: a journalism job offer.

In 2013, Franco tweeted that his life’s goal was to become a journalist. By 2018, he was collecting news from a variety of sources, a process called “aggregating,” and disseminating it to an audience of over 50,000 people across all his platforms.

This caught the eye of Channel 7. Steve Cejas, an executive producer at WSVN, told Miami-Dade College’s The Reporter in 2018 that Franco’s social media presence was what got him the job.

“I found him on Twitter,” Cejas said at the time. “He’s retweeted some of our stuff, and I would see a lot of his stuff on social media, and I figured why not give him a chance.”

Franco isn’t aware of WSVN executives conducting any vetting, and he said he was never asked about inappropriate tweets.

He abandoned his independent news outlet after being hired as a WSVN cyber journalist in early 2018 writing stories for the web, his Twitter account showed. By December 2019, he was promoted to social media producer.

He gained even more followers and not just from the younger crowd he had before. Politicians, news organizations, professional groups and police departments began following him, too.

Franco quickly became one of the most followed South Florida journalists across social media, receiving hundreds of comments, tips, likes and shares a week.

Hiring bloggers or “citizen journalists” isn’t a rare practice at news organizations. Professor Herbert Lowe, a University of Florida faculty member who teaches multimedia journalism, says organizations tend to seek them out.

“If you’re a news agency and you are trying to get as many eyeballs on your broadcast and attract a younger audience the best way to do that is to identify, recruit and promote those most in tune with what you are looking for,” Lowe said.

In March, three months after his promotion, Franco’s old 2013 tweets involving rape and sex resurfaced, along with accusations that he was sexually involved with underage girls. Some of Franco’s followers were outraged and demanded he be fired.

He put out a statement that partly read, “I made them [the tweets] many years ago as a ‘joke’ with friends. They are absolutely disgusting and not a representation of who I am.”

He continued to say, “That being said, everything else that I’m being accused of is NOT true.”

A week or two later, he unpinned his statement from his Twitter page, the outrage had died down and most of his followers stopped mentioning the older tweets.

But last Sunday night, Franco was arrested by Miami-Dade police while he was covering the George Floyd protests.

This rocketed him into the national spotlight and his old tweets and allegations against him re-entered the conversation on social media, but stronger then before.

After Franco’s arrest garnered him public sympathy, women decided to speak out in a method that was reminiscent of the #METOO movement. They tweeted “I was ___” with the age that they were sexually harassed or assaulted.

At least seven women came out on Twitter partially or fully telling their stories of how they say Franco preyed on them when they were underage. These tweets received thousands of interactions.

Many of his followers were ignited by these women’s stories and turned against Franco.

Rusindo, the aunt who helped raise him, said Franco is not capable of having done what he is accused of.

“I don’t understand the cruelty that they have toward him,” she said.

“Some people, I think, are taking this as an opportunity to further bring me down for the past relationships that they’re alleging these things from,” Franco said. “I question it to this day why they’re doing this, why they’re exaggerating things and making stuff up.”

He said he avoids going to grocery stores or restaurants in his area for fear of harassment.

Franco lost almost 20,000 followers in little more than a week — many of whom he believes were “bullied” into unfollowing him.

A petition was created on change.org titled “@WSVN NEEDS TO FIRE JOEL FRANCO”. It received 10,627 supporters.

“We shouldn’t have a rapist and a pedophile reporting the news to South Florida,” the petition read. “Fire him immediately.”

One person emailed WSVN’s Help Me Howard segment saying “Joel Franco needs to be fired immediately.”

Patrick Fraser, a reporter known for his work on the “Help Me Howard” segment, replied saying he understood the petitioners’ anger but that Franco is not a “pedophile or a rapist.”

“To be labeled one you have to be arrested, charged and convicted,” Fraser wrote. “He sent out a horrible tweet, but obviously, that is not enough to convict someone since he didn’t follow through.”

As of Sunday, Franco had not posted any information on his status.

He had, however, repinned his March statement on his Twitter.

This story has been corrected to indicate Parkway Regional West Medical Center did not become Jackson North Medical Center.

This story was originally published June 8, 2020 at 8:00 AM.

Devoun Cetoute

Miami Herald

305-376-2026

Miami Herald Cops and Breaking News Reporter Devoun Cetoute covers a plethora of Florida topics, from breaking news to crime patterns. He was on the breaking news team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2022. He’s a graduate of the University of Florida, born and raised in Miami-Dade. Theme parks, movies and cars are on his mind in and out of the office.

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April Rubin

Miami Herald