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There are few things in life that are more private than a sex video

“There are few things in life that are more private than a sex video,” the woman’s lawyer Donna Wilson wrote in a factum in the case heard earlier this month in Toronto. The man — who can’t be named because it would help identify Jane Doe — did not defend himself in court. Wilson said the past four years have been hard on her client, who was just 18 at the time. When the victim first went to police, they could not press charges but suggested she try a civil case.

“She stuck to her guns and she feels that what she’s been through has made her stronger,” Wilson said. Her client — despite being plagued by depression, even suicidal thoughts, in the wake of the event and occasional panic attacks— has finished undergrad and is enrolled in a professional program for health-care providers. But even as a graduate student she’s often surrounded by young women in long distance relationships who “sext” and share intimate images with partners far away, who know nothing of the hard lessons she learned as a teen.

Criminal charges weren’t possible when the then-18-year-old first found out her most intimate self was online for all to see, but in an Ontario Superior Court earlier this month she became the first Canadian to receive justice in a revenge-porn case.

Justice David G. Stinson awarded her the maximum amount the simplified court proceeding she’d selected allowed: $100,000 plus costs, bringing her total award to $141,708.03.

“I think that the most important thing is that the court says that this is wrong and people are deterred from doing it in the future,” Wilson said. “It’s wrong, it’s illegal and it’s very, very harmful.”