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A jury dominated in favor of a Texas girl who stated her ex-boyfriend had psychologically and sexually abused her by sharing intimate pictures of her on-line with out her consent.
A Texas girl was awarded $1.2 billion in damages final week after she sued her former boyfriend and accused him of sending intimate pictures of her to her household, associates and associates from pretend on-line accounts.
The lady, who’s recognized solely by the initials D.L. in courtroom paperwork, sued her former boyfriend, Marques Jamal Jackson, claiming he had psychologically and sexually abused her by distributing so-called revenge porn, a time period for sexually express pictures or movies of somebody which might be shared with out consent.
The couple began courting in 2016 and had been dwelling collectively in Chicago in early 2020 once they started a “lengthy and drawn-out break up,” in response to the lawsuit. D.L. briefly moved to her mom’s home in Texas, and Jackson started accessing the safety system there to spy on her, the lawsuit stated.
In October 2021, the couple formally ended their relationship, and D.L. informed Jackson that she not needed him to have entry to what the lawsuit described as “visible intimate materials” of her that she had allowed him to have whereas they had been a pair.
As an alternative, he posted the pictures on a number of social media platforms and web sites, together with a pornographic web site and in a publicly accessible folder on the web file-sharing service Dropbox, the lawsuit stated. He recognized her within the materials, utilizing her identify and handle, and pictures of her face. He created pretend social media pages and electronic mail accounts to share the fabric together with her household, associates and associates, together with by sending them a hyperlink to the Dropbox folder. On the social media pages the place he had posted the pictures, he tagged accounts for her employer and for her private gymnasium.
The lawsuit says that this was nonetheless occurring days earlier than the grievance was filed in April 2022.
Jackson additionally used D.L.’s private checking account to pay his hire, harassed her with calls and textual content messages from masked numbers, and informed her mortgage officer that she had submitted a fraudulent mortgage utility, the lawsuit stated.
In a March 2022 electronic mail to D.L. cited within the lawsuit, Jackson stated, “You’ll spend the remainder of your life attempting and failing to wipe your self off the web.”
Jackson couldn’t be reached for remark. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.
He additionally didn’t seem in courtroom Wednesday, when a jury in Houston ordered him to pay $200 million for previous and future psychological anguish and $1 billion in punitive damages.
Brad Gilde, a lawyer for D.L., stated that he didn’t count on the total $1.2 billion to be paid out however that he hoped it could function a deterrent for others.
“The communication from the jury is that you simply make it your mission to destroy somebody emotionally for the remainder of your life, then you’re going to be dealing with a judgment that’s going to destroy you financially for the remainder of your life,” he stated.
Gilde stated that D.L. was doing higher for the reason that jury members reached their determination as a result of it confirmed that they heard her and believed her.
The jury discovered Jackson accountable for violating Texas’ revenge porn regulation, however Gilde resisted utilizing the time period to explain the case. He described the violation as “image-based sexual abuse,” a time period that’s most well-liked by many advocates for survivors of sexual abuse and legal professionals who characterize them. These teams have considerations that “revenge porn” trivializes the actions and might counsel that victims did one thing to trigger their privateness to be violated. The time period additionally overlooks conditions through which an individual shares pictures of somebody with out consent for monetary achieve, leisure or social standing as a substitute of due to a private grievance.
Gilde stated regulation companies not often took up some of these “person-versus-person” instances as a result of there was no insurance coverage concerned or different dependable technique of recovering damages.
The jury’s verdict, Gilde stated, “is a validation of her of her want to make clear this problem, to encourage others to do the identical, and in addition encourage regulation companies to take these instances and to have interaction regulation enforcement to make sure that one of these exercise doesn’t occur once more.”
This text initially appeared in The New York Occasions.
