Attorney: Accuser in Kettle extortion case was not vetted properly

  Teen suicide rates are rising. Cyberbullying is too. About half of young people have experienced some form of cyberbullying. One young man not only stood up to his bully, but won the fight! It’s been almost 10 years since he was first bullied, but Quinton Williams remembers those angry and ugly words starting in the first grade. “I felt like an outcast, l felt like I didn’t belong,” Quinton said. His bully or bullies used the anonymity of the internet to target Quinton. ‘They say a lot of stuff that they won’t say in front of your face,” he said. Sameer Hinduja, PhD, Professor of Criminology and Director of Cyberbullying Research Center at Florida Atlantic University is a cyberbullying expert and knows how much words can hurt. “They don’t as compared, for example, to a punch, or a kick, or a push or a shove, but still absolutely they…

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the number of offences increased to 105 last year, up from 55 in 2015. So far this year 73 offences have been reported. Wolverhampton Liberal Democrat campaigner Rob Quarmby said: “I don’t want to see, as I do sometimes, a child’s first conversation about the meaning of consent being in a police interview room. “I have a daughter and the thought that something like this can happen to her horrifies me?” Revenge porn is the distribution of a private sexual image of someone without their consent, with the aim of causing distress. It is a phenomenon that has swept the country, with teenagers and young adults taking and sharing naked photographs on smartphones.

  New York’s revenge-porn bill died early Thursday morning after the Senate adjourned for the year and took no action in the wake of an 11th-hour campaign by Google against the legislation. The proposal — which has languished in Albany since its introduction in 2013 and was recently taken up again after a Post exposé — would have made nonconsensual dissemination of sexually explicit images a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. It would have also helped victims sue Web hosts to remove the offending images. But Google mounted a late effort against the bill, with the Internet behemoth opposed to any government oversight over how it regulates content. Attorney Carrie Goldberg, who’d been leading lobbying efforts for the bill, was livid that senators went home without even taking a vote, effectively killing the legislation until next year. The only long-shot chance for the bill is if…

  It was 1995. Bill Clinton was in the White House. Seinfeld and Friends dominated primetime on TV. Radiohead was on the radio. The internet was still an innocent baby (except for porn, of course), but people could anticipate that it was going to be huge. That year, the story goes, California Congressman Chris Cox was on an airplane back to Washington when he read that the early online service provider Prodigy had been sued for defamation over something that a user had posted to one of its bulletin boards. The anonymous person had accused a Long Island securities firm (later immortalized in The Wolf of Wall Street) of fraud in connection with an initial public offering. The majority opinion of the New York State Supreme Court said that because Prodigy posted user guidelines, used moderators, and scanned for indecent content, it was therefore a “publisher” and therefore legally liable…

Jasmin Caldwell, KCEN 7:15 PM. CDT October 05, 2021 The defense team for a Twin peaks defendant filed a motion Thursday to get Mclennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna removed from their client’s trial — citing “illegal and outrageous” government conduct. Houston-based Defense Attorney Paul Looney demanded Reyna be replaced by a special prosecutor. He claimed Reyna was criminally victimizing his client — Cody Ledbetter and Ledbetter’s wife. “We just want a trial, but instead, we’re getting revenge porn,” Looney said. According to Looney, Ledbetter had images of himself and his wife engaging in sexual activity on his cell phone. After Ledbetter’s arrest, Looney said Reyna copied and distributed those images more than 150 times to counsel and staff for each of the Twin Peaks defendants. “There’s nothing kinky, nothing weird, it’s a married couple engaging in married activities,” Looney said. “It has nothing to do with any theory, or any…

LONDON:  An Italian former financial analyst who posted pictures of a female intern colleague on pornographic websites was on Tuesday jailed by a London court for 16 weeks. Davide Buccheri, 25, of Bologna, Italy, was also ordered to pay 5,000 Pounds (5,670 euros, $6,810) in compensation to her. He was sentenced following a conviction for harassment at Westminster Magistrates’ Court last Friday.  The London School of Economics graduate carried out a seven-month campaign against his victim after she rejected his romantic advances while they both worked at M&G Investments. He took photos from her social media and uploaded them alongside pornographic pictures of other women, before trying to discredit her by telling their bosses at the asset management firm. “You, having been spurned by her in a very professional and gentle and understanding way, set about on a course of revenge,” said Judge Richard Blake in passing sentence. “This is a…

  A film centering on the devastating effect of online harassment against women premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. Called “Netizens,” the documentary examines the day-to-day impact various forms of online abuse, ranging from online mob harassment to “revenge porn,” have on people’s lives. “Revenge porn,” also known as nonconsensual pornography, is the growing phenomenon of having one’s intimate photos and videos spread online to shame someone or ruin their reputation. One in eight American social media users has been a target of nonconsensual pornography, according to a 2017 study conducted by the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Moreover, while men and women are both victims of online harassment, women are much more likely to receive sexualized forms of online abuse, according to the Pew Research Center. “Netizens,” directed and produced by Cynthia Lowen, follows the personal stories of three women — attorney Carrie Goldberg, game developer Anita Sarkeesian,…

  Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) boss Ezekiel Mutua has described as barbaric the trending video showing the Kirinyaga Deputy Governor, Peter Ndambiri, naked and at the mercy of a group of men filming him and a naked woman beside him. The video is circulating on WhatsApp, where it was released on Tuesday evening, and has become the subject of debate on morning radio and Twitter. Dr Mutua, dubbed Kenya’s Moral Policeman for the stand he often takes on obscenity, jumped onto the wave Wednesday morning, saying filming the deputy governor was beyond justification and describing it as “barbaric, outrageous and a violation of human rights.” “In my view, the invasion of privacy and primitive harassment of a couple in private, whatever their sin or crime, is the evidence of how low we have sunk as a society. If the video doing rounds is true, then this is a major…

  By Ricardo Torres-Cortez (contact) Operators of a now-defunct revenge porn website have been ordered to pay $2 million and destroy images depicting the victims and their personal information, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office announced. The site, MyEx.com, allowed users to post intimate photos, videos and personal information of their ex-partners, officials said. The website would then allegedly charge the victims up to $2,800 to take the information down. As a result of the order announced Friday, MyEx.com is permanently barred from operating a website or online service that disseminates intimate images of individuals without their written consent, officials said. The court also ordered the defendants to destroy the intimate images in their possession and pay $2,022,930 in monetary relief to the Federal Trade Commission. After the Nevada Attorney General’s Office and the FTC filed for an injunction in January of this year, MyEx.com was successfully taken offline, officials said….

An article about the website Anon-IB recently garnered national attention when dozens of male Marines posted nude photographs of their female colleagues. Anon-IB—short for Anonymous Image Board—is one of many “revenge porn” websites that encourage users to post explicit photos of their exes, without the exes’ consent. Anon-IB receives 50,000 individual visitors each day and its page views can average 170,000, according to the New York Post. The site’s categories include “drunk/passed out,” “peeping toms” and “up-the-skirt” photos. Some material depicts molestation and rape, with many of the girls pictured below the age of 18. Users can post teenage girls’ pictures, as long as the tag does not contain their age, according to the New York Post. Revenge porn epitomizes the failure of legislators and policymaking to catch up with the rapid progression of technology. Georgia resident Brandon Lee Gary, for example, had been convicted for taking up-the-skirt photos of…

VICTIMS of revenge porn are suffering in silence in the UK, new research has claimed. Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan commissioned an anonymous survey of 92 victims who were asked about their experiences. Only 4% successfully prosecuted their offender, 76% did not report their crime to the police. 75% of those who responded said they did not tell anyone as they felt embarrassed or ashamed, and 90% said they would have reported it to the police if they were assured of anonymity. Mrs Mulligan said the report showed “stark and irrefutable” evidence that “the government, police and criminal justice system are collectively failing victims of revenge porn”. She said: “With just 4% of victims who responded to our survey achieving a successful prosecution, there is no question in my mind - the law is not fit for purpose. “The lack of anonymity is key to victims concerns and…

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - Lori Jones didn’t know her estranged husband had a private photo of her, until that photo showed up on an internet porn site. “When I went on that X-Hamster site, there was 20,544 people who had already viewed me,” she said.  “I just sat there and cried. I didn’t know what to do.” Jones contacted the Winter Garden Police Department, which investigated the case. Investigators seized laptops and obtained IP addresses from internet providers. Eventually, Jones’ estranged husband was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of sexual cyber-harassment. “The betrayal of it, I didn’t leave the house for two months, I didn’t eat, I didn’t work,” said Jones.  “It’s embarrassing, it’s degrading. It’s the most horrible situation that I have ever gone through in my life.” But,after less than 90 days, the State Attorney’s office closed the case, declining prosecution. Records obtained by 9 Investigates show there…

  Back in 2010, most people weren’t familiar with the term ‘revenge porn’. It hadn’t yet entered the pop culture lexicon, but over the next eight years it certainly would as everyone from high school students to A-List celebrities fell victim to one of the digital age’s biggest downsides. Arguably the first place the phenomenon was birthed was the website Is Anyone Up?, founded by Hunter Moore. The high school dropout, former band manager and sometimes DJ originally started the site as a type of chat forum, however, its specialty quickly shifted to revenge porn. As shown in the documentary Hunter Moore: The Revenge Pornographer the site soon exploded from a niche portal shared among scorned lovers, to something Moore claimed grew from 50 hits a day to 100,000. And then, millions. Yet it was one of Moore’s victims, Kayla Law, who realised something was off. Well, besides the fact…

INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) — 13 Investigates a gap in Indiana law that could allow someone to post sexually explicit images of you or older teens without consent, and worse yet without prosecution. One 18-year old is speaking out in hopes of empowering more revenge porn victims and advocating for a change in state law. It was a provocative photo similar to infamous cover shots of popular Hollywood stars on magazines: Topless women with strategically placed arms. But 18-year-old Colene Speckman never meant for her image to land on a porn site. “You feel violated. You feel dirty,” she told 13 Investigates. Colene’s photo was supposed to post to Snapchat and then quickly disappear. “You don’t really think that anything is going to happen,” she said. Nonconsensual disclosure of explicit photos But in seconds, Colene says a rejected classmate snagged a screen shot that threatened to ruin her life. Since freshman year,…

ASSOCIATED PRESS Published 12:59 p.m. CT Oct. 4, 2017 | Updated 6:13 p.m. CT Oct. 4, 2017 ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — An eastern Minnesota man has been sentenced under a new state law that seeks to hold people accountable for revenge porn. Anoka resident Michael Weigel was sentenced to four months in jail and three years of probation, the Pioneer Press reported. The 39-year-old was convicted on one count of felony nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images. Weigel was accused of creating a fake Facebook account under the name of his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, friending people they knew and posting naked pictures of the woman last December. He pleaded guilty to the charge in August. “I will worry about these images for the rest of my life and live with the shame and embarrassment the rest of my life,” the woman told the court. She spent weeks trying to have…