A woman was awarded $1.2bn (£944m) by a Texas jury after it was ruled out that she was the victim of revenge porn.
The woman, identified in the court papers by her initials DL, filed a harassment lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend in 2022. After their breakup, he allegedly posted intimate photos of her online to publicly shame her.
The settlement, according to her attorneys, is a victory for victims of "image-based sexual abuse." "While a judgment in this case is unlikely to be recovered, the compensatory verdict restores DL's good name," said lead trial attorney Bradford Gilde in a statement.
The attorneys had initially requested $100 million in damages from the jury. Mr. Gilde added, "We hope the staggering amount of this verdict will serve as a deterrent and prevent others from engaging in this despicable activity."
According to court documents, the woman began courting her ex-boyfriend in 2016. During their relationship, the woman shared intimate photographs of herself with the defendant. After their breakup in 2021, he is accused of posting the photos without her permission on social media platforms and explicit websites.
He allegedly sent URLs to the photos to her friends and family via a Dropbox folder that was accessible to the public.
Additionally, he was accused of having access to her phone, social media accounts, and email, as well as the camera system in her mother's home, which he used to eavesdrop on her.
At one point, the defendant allegedly sent the victim the following message: "You will spend the remainder of your life attempting and failing to remove yourself from the internet. Everyone you meet will hear the tale and begin searching. Best of Luck"
Attorneys for the woman assert that her ex-boyfriend posted the images in order to inflict psychological abuse, domestic violence, and sexual abuse.
According to US media reports, he did not appear in court and did not have a lawyer representing him. In addition to paying the woman $1 billion in punitive damages, the judge ordered that he give her $200 million to compensate her for her past and future emotional suffering.
In the past, significant settlements have been achieved in cases involving pornographic vengeance in the United States. A court in California granted a lady the sum of $6.8 million in 2018 because her ex-partner had published pornographic photographs of her on the internet.
DL explained to a Texas radio station that she had no choice but to hire a civil attorney since the local police were of very little service to her.
In 2016, approximately 10 million people in the United States came forward to report having been victims of non-consensual or retaliation porn.
According to research that was carried out at the time by the Data & Society Research Institute, a significant number of these people are young women between the ages of 18 and 29. There are no states in the United States that do not have anti-revenge porn legislation on the books, with the exception of Massachusetts and South Carolina.
