× Expand Illustration by Annie Maynard

A North Carolina woman sued the social media giant Snapchat and dating app Tinder in Wake County Superior Court on Thursday, alleging that Snapchat had encouraged the circulation of images of her sexual assault and Tinder had destroyed evidence in her sexual-assault case and was “endangering woman through the manner in which it conducts business.”

The woman, Aaliyah Palmer, was 18 in January 2017, when she met a group of soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg through Tinder Social at a party. She had sexual intercourse with one of them—consensually at first, though she attempted to revoke consent, she says, when the man became violent. The man, whom she identifies in Thursday’s lawsuit as Nicholas Savoy, refused to stop.

Palmer then sought to file rape charges against Savoy, only to run into a 40-year-old state Supreme Court ruling that consent could not be revoked, according to multiple media reports. At the time, North Carolina was the only state with such a law in place.

No one was charged with assaulting Palmer. Fayetteville police charged four active-duty soldiers—John Nagy, Anthony Johnson, Samuel Mazariegos, and Jeffrey Creech—with illegally possessing “peeping Tom” videos of the sexual encounter, which were allegedly filmed through cellphones slipped under a bathroom door. (In addition, Mazariegos was charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly defecating in Palmer’s shoes.)

Palmer’s story, which was made public in The Fayetteville Observer, Vice, The Guardian, and elsewhere, helped motivate the General Assembly to finally change the law last October.

This lawsuit—filed by attorney Robby Jessup, who has also filed high-profile cases against the Montessori School of Raleigh and Duke’s Camp Kaleidoscope—names as defendants the men Palmer says “assaulted, threatened, harassed, and intimidated her.” Palmer alleges that she knew the other defendants were “guarding” the bathroom door because she could hear them making jokes with Savoy as he allegedly assaulted her.

(The INDY called a number listed for Savoy in Wisconsin; a woman who identified herself as his mother answered the phone on Thursday morning. “I’m not giving you any information,” she said. “My son was not charged with anything. And if his name shows anywhere being published, we will go after you. This girl has been trying to go after him, but he couldn’t be charged. I spoke with a police officer who was investigating, and he told me there was nothing—her story was not corroborated.” She then hung up.)

Afterward, the lawsuit says, she tried to ensure that the men deleted the images and videos. They told her they hadn’t taken them. The next day, however, at least one of the men sent videos or pictures of the alleged assault to the Tinder Social group chat and told her they had more images of the encounter. But when Palmer went to screenshot the messages to show the police, the conversation vanished, the lawsuit says.

“The messages disappeared because the [alleged assailants] ‘unmatched’ her friend group,” the complaint alleges.

Soon after, Palmer went to a party in Fayetteville, where she encountered some of the men. She asked them to delete the pictures, but they again denied having them. A police investigation later discovered this was untrue; several of the men had taken videos and uploaded them to Snapchat.

Later that year, Palmer withdrew from N.C. State, where she was studying on a full-ride scholarship.

A lawsuit targeting men with participating in or aiding in sexual assault, or uploading videos of that assault, isn’t novel.

What’s new are the allegations that the platforms on which Palmer met the men and on which the images were distributed are culpable.

In Snapchat’s case, the lawsuit says it facilitated a form of revenge porn.

The lawsuit alleges that “because of the ways Snapchat is and has been designed, constructed, marketed, and maintained, [Palmer’s assailants] were able to send these nonconsensual, pornographic photographs and videos of [Palmer] with little to no threat of law enforcement verifying that they did so.”

That’s because “Snapchat does not save a copy of snaps after they are opened by a recipient, and even a snap that is never opened is deleted from Snapchat’s servers after thirty days. Because of this, Snapchat itself cannot access the content of snaps after they are opened or, if unopened, after thirty days. This operational feature makes it exceedingly difficult for law enforcement to verify when and by whom illicit Snapchat content is sent because establishing probable cause and obtaining a lawful warrant almost always require more time.”

At the same time, the lawsuit notes, recipients of snaps can easily screengrab an image, preserving it forever.

“Unlike most social media platforms or mobile communication devices,” the lawsuit says, “Snapchat’s unique communication system allows users æ to send unlawful content while remaining essentially anonymous because Snapchat cannot recover the content of these snaps once they are opened.”

This “allowed, encouraged, and aided certain users … to violate several state and federal laws,” including a state law governing the disclosure of private images, the lawsuit says.

As for Tinder—which is owned by Match—the lawsuit alleges that the way Tinder Social (which was discontinued in 2017) was constructed enabled Palmer’s assailants to erase their admissions of assault and the possession and dissemination of revenge porn.

“The [alleged assailants] were able to send these threatening, degrading, harassing messages to [Palmer] and then remove all trace that they existed,” the lawsuit says.

Tinder, the lawsuit says, does not keep records of messages for a significant period of time after people are unmatched, which has made it “exceedingly difficult for victims and law enforcement to obtain evidence of sexual assault, sexual harassment, or other unlawful activity between Tinder users.” Match.com, the lawsuit notes, stores messages for 180 days, read or unread.

Through their “intentional and reckless” behavior, the lawsuit alleges, Snapchat and Tinder caused Palmer “emotional distress, embarrassment, humiliation, fear, and harm.”

State Senator Jeff Jackson, a Mecklenburg Democrat who pushed for changes to North Carolina’s consent law, told the INDY, “I take Ms. Palmer very seriously, and I know her to be an effective and responsible advocate, so I’m going to take this issue seriously.”

Tinder and Snapchat did not immediately respond to requests for comment. This is a developing story.

Contact editor in chief Jeffrey C. Billman at jbillman@indyweek.com.

Support independent local journalism. Join the INDY Press Club to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.