A Texas girl was awarded $1.2 billion in damages final week after she sued her former boyfriend and accused him of sending intimate photos of her to her household, associates and colleagues from faux on-line accounts.
The girl, who’s recognized solely by the initials D.L. in court docket 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 specific images or movies of somebody which can be shared with out consent.
The couple began relationship in 2016 and have been dwelling collectively in Chicago in early 2020 once they started a “lengthy and drawn-out break up,” based on the lawsuit. D.L. briefly moved to her mom’s home in Texas and Mr. Jackson started accessing the safety system there to spy on her, the lawsuit mentioned.
In October 2021, the couple formally ended their relationship and D.L. instructed Mr. Jackson that she now not wished him to have entry to what the lawsuit described as “visible intimate materials” of her that she had allowed him to have whereas they have been a pair.
As a substitute, he posted the photographs on a number of social media platforms and web sites, together with a pornographic web site, and in a publicly accessible folder on the net file-sharing service Dropbox, the lawsuit mentioned. He recognized her within the materials, utilizing her identify and tackle, and pictures of her face. He created faux social media pages and electronic mail accounts to share the fabric along with her household, associates and colleagues, together with by sending them a hyperlink to the Dropbox folder. On the social media pages the place he had posted the photographs, he tagged accounts for her employer and for her private fitness center.
The lawsuit says that this was nonetheless taking place days earlier than the grievance was filed in April 2022.
Mr. 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 instructed her mortgage officer that she had submitted a fraudulent mortgage software, the lawsuit mentioned.
In a March 2022 electronic mail to D.L. cited within the lawsuit, Mr. Jackson mentioned, “You’ll spend the remainder of your life attempting and failing to wipe your self off the web.”
Mr. Jackson couldn’t be reached for remark. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.
He additionally didn’t seem in court docket on 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., mentioned that he didn’t anticipate the total $1.2 billion to be paid out, however that he hoped it might function a deterrent for others.
“The communication from the jury is that you simply make it your mission to damage somebody emotionally for the remainder of your life, then you’re going to be going through a judgment that’s going to damage you financially for the remainder of your life,” he mentioned.
Mr. Gilde mentioned that D.L. was doing higher for the reason that jury members reached their resolution as a result of it confirmed that they heard her and believed her.
The jury discovered Mr. Jackson responsible for violating Texas’ revenge porn regulation, however Mr. 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 popular by many advocates for survivors of sexual abuse and legal professionals who signify them. These teams have issues that “revenge porn” trivializes the actions and might recommend that victims did one thing to trigger their privateness to be violated. The time period additionally overlooks conditions wherein an individual shares photos of somebody with out consent for monetary achieve, leisure or social standing as a substitute of due to a private grievance.
Mr. Gilde mentioned regulation corporations hardly ever took up a majority 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, Mr. Gilde mentioned, “is a validation of her of her need to make clear this difficulty, to encourage others to do the identical, and likewise encourage regulation corporations to take these instances and to interact regulation enforcement to make sure that any such exercise doesn’t occur once more.”
