I Was a Victim of Revenge Porn. I Offered Him a Plea Deal

I received a threatening message on Tumblr from an account I didn't know saying they had nude images of me and would post them if I didn't become their personal "web slut", meaning I had to tell them every time I had sexual activity, and send images and videos to them on demand.

If I didn't, they would "expose" me. I was terrified; I'd never received a threat like this before. I didn't understand who it was or how they had images of me.

My friends told me to block the account, and the next day, on January 16, 2018, we were taking shifts watching the Tumblr account to see if this person followed through on their threat. At about 11:30 A.M., the images went up.

My friend's boyfriend was the first to see them. He quickly took screenshots and texted them to me: "Spring, you're on the site. I'm not joking." I felt horrified when I saw them, and I knew immediately it was my ex-boyfriend. Only he had those images.

One image was a screenshot of my OKCupid profile. My ex had sent me that exact image a few days before, lamenting our high match rating and asking why I don't want to get back together. It was uploaded alongside the nude images in the first revenge porn post.

I felt betrayed, horrified, and terrified. I feared losing my job. And I felt exposed—the word people behind revenge porn use.

When it happens, there's this sense of exposure that's deeper than you ever thought possible. It's not like someone accidentally saw you naked. These images have been purposefully and maliciously put on the internet without your consent—to ruin your life.

Posting revenge porn—the non-consensual sharing of sexual images—is sexual assault. It feels like a physical assault and creates the sense of having something taken from you—dignity, privacy—that you didn't really even know was there until you suffered this exposure.

Major Red Flags

I had been dating my ex-boyfriend for a year and I loved him. We were trying to get pregnant, and I fully trusted him.

But there were a couple of times he had broken my trust in our relationship. He had gone through my phone, and through a security camera at my house, but he told me about those things, and so I forgave him and moved on.

I see now those were major red flags in our relationship. When somebody breaks your trust and goes through your private things, they don't have respect for you or your boundaries.

I broke up with him because he had cheated on me, and I found out. Over the next two months between when we broke up and the first revenge porn post, he kept trying to contact me, saying how depressed he was, so I stayed in contact.

I was angry, but I loved him. I tried to be friends and to support him, but I wasn't interested in getting back together, so he became increasingly harassing.

In the last message before I blocked him on text, he said: "I see you blocked me on Snapchat, I've had to take action."

The next day, the revenge porn posts started.

Order of Protection and Police Reports

I was nauseous and didn't know what to do. I called friends, including some who work in sexual assault and others who are lawyers, and they recommended that I go to the city's office to get my ex-boyfriend served with an order of protection.

The order protects you physically, but also online; the individual is not supposed to contact you, come and see you in person, or post about you on the internet.

I hoped the order would stop him, but he knew that I was trying to serve him and so was evading it, meaning the process took about a month.

During that time, he kept creating various new shell accounts online. For example, he made a Twitter account with the name "please stop blocking me" and tried to make contact.

I blocked each new account, and then another threat came through on Facebook. I knew he was behind it again. He sent more nude images of me and said he would post them online if I didn't send him another intimate photo.

At this point, in early February 2018, I made the first police report, which was a couple of weeks before the order of protection was finally served to him.

Revenge porn is illegal in many places, and a law against it had recently been passed in New York City, which I knew about because I work in the field of sexuality and sex education.

But after I made the police report, another post went up.

When I took action, my ex-boyfriend retaliated, and this became the pattern. Every time I filed a police report, another post. When I had him arrested, another post.

They were all photos and videos of me that only he had. I was regularly sexually assaulted in this way over and over, and I had no control over when or how it was happening.

I cried for hours a day and felt so overwhelmed. I was doing what I was supposed to do by filing police reports, trying to take charge and get him to stop, but it wasn't working. I felt completely powerless.

He was posting my name, my face, my contact details. My work address, my work phone number, my work email address. My Facebook account.

I had hundreds if not thousands of men harassing me. Mostly, I got messages through Facebook, but a lot came through my work email. I disabled my work phone number.

The security officers at my school escorted me to and from the train station so I would have some protection at work.

The police weren't very helpful and don't appear to know how to investigate internet crimes. They're not sufficiently trained, and they don't have a dedicated unit.

At that time, a lot of police didn't even know that this was a crime because it was a new law. I had to teach them the penal code.

They also didn't seem to know how to properly collect evidence for this crime. A lot of them took photos and videos of the posts on their phones, which was horrifying and made me uncomfortable because I was sure they weren't supposed to be propagating this material.

Later, I was told by the special victims unit that I should be the one keeping track of and cataloguing all the posts and evidence—not the police.

I felt very alone when filing police reports. I was documenting everything and trying to keep track, but no one seemed to be investigating. When I was pressing criminal charges, I had the DAs helping me, but they also didn't really know how to investigate these crimes because it was all so new.

Chasing the Continuous Circle—and the Smartest Choice I Made

One of my best friends, Preston, was helping me search for all these images, especially on Tumblr, where most were. He'd search keywords like "slut professor" and other terms posters were using for my private content, and then keep reporting what he found until the sites took it down.

He was doing this continuously with me because we had to stay on top of the situation. Every time a new post goes up, the longer it stays there, the more it propagates, the more people reshare it, the more people download the photos and then share them again.

There are these circles of revenge porn jerks on the internet. This is what they do and get off to.

It became my whole life to search for content and get it taken down. It was a continuous circle.

All the while, I was afraid of losing my job; afraid that people would complain about this happening even though I was the victim. I was also afraid work would notice my productivity going down because I was spending so much time trying to contain this all-consuming, overwhelming situation.

A few months in, I went on vacation because I needed a break. Preston had been so helpful, and I asked if he could oversee my social media for the week while I shut my phone off.

I was so triggered by my phone. I was getting constant alerts from people, so I started leaving my phone at home because I couldn't be around it.

Most of the harassment would come through Facebook. When I got a new harassing message, we had to figure out where the new post was. Someone would say horrible things to me and that they saw these images, and I would have to be nice to them to try to find out where the new post was.

Some of them would be jerks and I'd block them, but if they told me where they saw the post, it was easier than trying to search for it on the internet across numerous platforms.

Most often, the post was on Tumblr, but they also appeared on YouPorn, PornHub, xHamster—site after site. It was even on Twitter and Facebook. Friends of mine on Facebook were sent nude images of me.

I went on vacation, leaving Preston in charge of my Facebook so he could get new posts taken down. As soon as I left, the first post with videos went up, and Preston got harassing messages. He chased Tumblr and tried to get the post taken down, but it wasn't.

When I reported a post on Tumblr, I had to prove that I was the person in the images to get them to take it down. I would have to upload a photo of my ID and go through several steps, but the reporting system would often crash, so it was a nightmare.

I had given Preston a copy of my ID for this purpose. He tried and tried, but couldn't get the Tumblr post taken down, and he was freaking out. He felt like it was his fault that this post with all the videos was spreading further and further while I was out of town with my phone off.

When I got back, Preston had contacted an amazing lawyer, Daniel Szalkiewicz, who had a lot of expertise in this field. I was nervous that I couldn't afford a lawyer, but I talked to Daniel, and he agreed to take my case. That was the smartest choice I made in this whole story, and I credit Preston for it.

Daniel knew how to find out who was behind posts, and how to use court orders to get the information from these platforms. We needed the information to finally prove it was my ex-boyfriend behind the posts. Daniel and his team were the magic behind my civil case and I'm so grateful to them.

Systems of Violence and What Tech Platforms Should Do

I don't understand the logic of choosing to sexually assault someone because you're angry over a breakup. It doesn't make sense to me at all. But we have these systems of violence in our society.

There's a lot of work to do to create caring and loving communities where we teach young people about consent, respect, and personal boundaries. That work needs to start young because it requires a huge cultural shift.

These days, with the deepfake and AI technology available, anyone can make revenge porn of someone easily. You can't simply tell people not to take intimate images—which would be victim blaming anyway—but there's no way to protect yourself against deepfakes.

So, it's not a tech problem. It's a human problem that we must address on a deeper level.

Still, though, I'm angry that big tech platforms profit off things like revenge porn. They often take a long time to take posts down. They could do a lot more to be responsive to revenge porn, and to make the reporting process easier for victims, like removing something immediately when it's reported instead of waiting until someone at the platform can review it first.

Tech also needs to do a better job of supporting victims. When you reach out to these platforms, you often can't even get a response. As a victim, you feel even more alone, and like you're sending your messages into oblivion.

I had tried to sue Tumblr first, before anything else. But there are a lot of protections for big tech companies that were put in place to allow for the proliferation of the internet.

There's no way to properly hold them responsible, and it's very discouraging for the people being harmed.

How the Case Concluded

I had offered my ex-boyfriend a plea deal in the criminal case because I don't believe jail is reparative.

We had all the evidence we needed. I said if you plead guilty—because I didn't really want to go to court as I was terrified of a trial—then I will offer you the option of taking a year-long abuser's program instead of jail. The program had shown reduced recidivism among participants.

He took that plea deal in the criminal case, which meant he was automatically guilty in the civil case.

The final day in court was to award damages. I spent a couple of hours on the stand going through all the details. It was a horrible and traumatic experience that brought back up all my feelings, and I spent hours crying in court.

The jury went out and deliberated for over an hour. I was wondering why they were deliberating for so long when he pleaded guilty.

My lawyers had originally told me they would ask for $10 million, but on the day of the trial, they suggested to the jury that they should award $20 million.

The jury came back and awarded $30 million.

The reason for deliberating so long was that many of them thought I deserved more—they wanted to send a strong message about this crime.

It's a crazy number, $30 million. My ex-boyfriend doesn't have that, so I'm not going to get $30 million, but the message to society is clear: This crime is intolerable, and we are awarding these high numbers as a deterrent.

Carrying the Wound

It has been six years since this all began. I go to a lot of different types of therapy to process things. I believe in therapy.

But I get triggered by any number of things, like when someone pulls out a phone on the subway to take a picture because I have bright pink hair. My body recoils: Oh my god! What are you doing? Do not take a picture without asking me!

My phone has been on silent since 2018 because I was getting: ding, ding, ding. That notification sound still makes me flinch.

Things will probably trigger me for a very long time. Maybe forever; I don't know.

Now, I have trouble trusting people I am in intimate relationships with. I like to think that I trust people I am dating, but there is a part of me deep down that is still carrying this wound.

I am working on it. But these things will continue to impact me, and that... sucks.

Dr. Spring Cooper is an associate professor in the Department of Community Health and Social Sciences at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.

All views expressed are the author's own.

As told to Shane Croucher.

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