Women on ‘revenge porn’ sites describe their pain, humiliation as lawsuit moves forward

From left, Hollie Toups, 32, Marianna Taschinger, 22, and Kelly Hinson, 27, are among more than 20 Southeast Texan women to join in a class action lawsuit against a 'revenge porn' website that allows anonymous users to post intimate pictures of the women without their consent. Photo taken Friday, January 18, 2013 Guiseppe Barranco/The Enterprise less From left, Hollie Toups, 32, Marianna Taschinger, 22, and Kelly Hinson, 27, are among more than 20 Southeast Texan women to join in a class action lawsuit against a 'revenge porn' website that allows anonymous ... more Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Women on ‘revenge porn’ sites describe their pain, humiliation as lawsuit moves forward 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

Hollie Toups starts every morning with a cup of coffee and several pornographic websites.

Toups, a 32-year-old teacher's aide living in Nederland, isn't looking for racy pictures. She's looking for herself.

"And usually the whole time I'm literally holding my breath, sweating, praying nothing comes up," she said.

Six months ago, a friend tipped her off to some photos on a website, a "revenge porn" website that allows anonymous users to upload photo galleries of Texas women, along with their names, addresses and other personal details. The photos are organized by region, with hundreds of photo galleries featuring Southeast Texas women. Many photos are of underage girls.

Toups contacted the website and asked them to remove the photos, some of which she had sent to an ex-boyfriend. Others were self-portraits — taken to track her exercise progress — that Toups said had never been sent to anyone. Included with the photos was her full name, email address, "pretty much all my personal information," she said.

The website's administrators offered to remove the stolen photos — for a fee. The photos were eventually removed, but appeared again on the site several weeks later. Then they began to appear on other "revenge porn" websites.

"I guess that's what it took to piss me off enough to talk to someone," she said.

On Friday afternoon, Beaumont attorney John S. Morgan filed a petition for damages and class action certification in an Orange County district court on behalf of Toups and more than two dozen women, many of whom live in Jefferson and Orange counties. The suit also names GoDaddy.com, the site's host.

Repeated attempts to contact site administrators — via an email address listed on the site — were not answered. Also named in the lawsuit is the site's administrative contact, Kris Kronowski, who is listed with a Richardson address. Web searches on Kronowski yield little other than a domain name registration for the website LouisianaWins.com, which contains only a message stating that "CajunWins.com is currently undergoing maintenance."

Morgan is seeking unspecified damages not just from the site's owners but the individuals who post content and pay to subsribe. Morgan is also seeking an injunction to shut down the website on the basis that posted content is an invasion of privacy under Texas law — and in that arena, he may have already been successful.

Earlier this week, anyone could log on to the site and peruse galleries organized by region, with hundreds of galleries featuring Southeast Texas women identified often by first name, last initial and hometown. Even without creating an account and paying the subscription fee, anyone could "rate" women and comment anonymously on photos.

On Friday, a day after Morgan announced his intention to file the suit, the website became restricted, allowing access to only paid subscribers. Since late Friday afternoon, the site has been inaccessible — all that remains is an internal server error message.

But as Toups has learned, just because you can't see the photos now doesn't mean you won't be able to see them later — or that another website just like this one won't pop up in its place.

'Revenge porn' industry

Come on, baby. I love you. I'll never leave you. I can't stand the thought of sharing you with someone else.

Marianna Taschinger, a 22-year-old student living in Groves, had been dating her boyfriend a few months when he said all that and more in an effort to goad her into sending him nude photos.

"I had a specific conversation with him because I didn't feel comfortable sending them to him," she said. After a while, however, she relented. Several weeks ago, Taschinger found the photos on the Internet.

"He posted my first name, last initial and where I lived and then discussed me, I guess with other people, calling me one of his 'exploits,'" she said.

While it's not yet clear who posted the photos of Taschinger, she believes it was her ex, who she dated exclusively for more than a year.

"He called me a slut and promised to post more of me," she said. "He said he'd post more pictures if people 'liked' what he'd posted so far."

According to Forbes Magazine, the "revenge porn" industry gained a foothold in 2010 with the launch of Is Anyone Up?, a forum started by a man named Hunter Moore. Ex-boyfriends and spurned lovers were encouraged to post explicit photos of women, along with stories and personal information. Contributors to the site — and others like it — were sometimes paid for submissions, adding incentive to find, request or take more photos of women, sometimes without their knowledge. Moore was investigated by the FBI after it was discovered that many photos featured underage girls.

At its peak, Moore claims the site saw over 30 million page views a month — and brought in around $13,000 a month in advertising revenue alone, according to Forbes Magazine. In April 2012, internet entrepreneur James McGibney convinced Moore to sell him IsAnyoneUp.com so it could be shut down. McGibney started the anti-bullying website Bullyville.com and told followers that Moore had agreed to change his ways.

But in August, McGibney issued a statement on Bullyville.com announcing that Moore was back to cyber-bullying people through his Twitter account and that he'd gone after McGibney himself.

"He has now been served with a defamation lawsuit and has restraining orders filed against him in two states." McGibney's statement reads.

A few weeks later, Moore announced plans to launch a new revenge porn website — one that would include women's Facebook accounts, home addresses and mapping software.

"We're gonna introduce the mapping stuff so you can stalk people," he told reporter Jessica Roy at tech blog Betabeat. The site was set to launch late last year but has yet to come to fruition.

On Friday, Moore Tweeted that a television show he's long been pitching is "finally getting picked up."

The creator of revenge porn may soon be coming to a television near you.

Personal life invaded

Last week, 27-year-old Kelly Hinson was shopping at Walmart when a man approached her.

"He said, 'You're Kelly, right?' Then he told me — in person — that he saved my photos to his computer," Hinson said. "I literally ran off. I ran off."

Hinson doesn't know who posted the photos on the website. The man who took them, her ex-boyfriend, is dead. Hinson said he committed suicide two months before the photos appeared.

Hinson is now nine weeks pregnant, a fact introduced to her "revenge porn" page by anonymous commenters.

"The people commenting anonymously are posting where I live, my location, basically to kill myself," she said. "They said I should abort my baby with a rusty coat hanger."

Hinson approached two police departments and two lawyers, with no luck.

"Nobody was taking me seriously," she said. "They were basically telling me there was nothing I can do."

At first, Toups had similar luck. Until she met Morgan.

"Once I became aware of the story, it had a big personal effect on me," the attorney said.

Since the suit has been made public, "we're getting calls from all over the place," he said. Morgan spent Friday fielding calls from other victims and media outlets like the Wall Street Journal.

Morgan said he feels he has a strong case for invasion of privacy.

"Everyone has a certain right to privacy," he said. "No one gave permission for publication of photos or information."

Similar lawsuits have been filed by individual women across the country. The website PinkMeth.com — which solicited hackers to illegally obtain photos of women — is no longer online after one of its victims sued.

The issue is complicated because of the nature of the photos that make it on these websites. In the context of this website, anything can become pornography — a Facebook profile picture becomes fodder for commenters' imaginations when paired with salacious images many women took or shared in confidence. Commenters aren't satisfied with just a topless photo — they scour the internet for information about women, building character profiles based on social media and anonymous internet gossip.

Although the photos on the site are not currently visible, for Toups and the two dozen women who've joined the suit, the battle is just beginning. The nature of this case means that it will take years to resolve, Morgan said.

But the women involved say their situation has improved since finding Morgan — and each other.

"At first, if I wasn't at the gym or work. I didn't leave my house," Toups said. "I feel like today for the first time in months, I can breathe. I'd been carrying this by myself."

Women involved in the suit say public scrutiny about the case has been as damaging as the photos themselves. They often feel ashamed and berated by people who blame the women for taking the photos — or allowing the photos to be taken — in the first place.

"I get frustrated trying to get the point across to people about who is to blame – it's not that simple," Toups said. All of the women The Enterprise interviewed said they felt pressured to send photos to their boyfriends.

"If you don't, I've had guys be like, 'You don't love me,'" Toups said.

"Or you're a prude," Hinson interjected.

But Morgan said the public should take this opportunity not to blame victims but to have a public discourse about just how much information someone is allowed to post about you online without your permission.

"The attitude of blaming the victims is one that I reject," he said. "There is nothing immoral or inappropriate for any two adults in a romantic, intimate relationship sharing their intimacies in this way."

The women involved in the suit are generally in their 20s or 30s, most single and almost all of them employed, Morgan said, though many have lost their jobs because of the site. Morgan will seek compensation for the complainants by "going after the purse strings," he said.

"If you can target the source of the money that makes the sites financially and economically viable, you can start shutting down this industry," he said.

In the meantime, Toups and hundreds of other women will keep starting — and often ending — their days nervously searching dark, unsavory corners of the internet.

"I hope that one day that goes away, but for now, we wanna catch it before everyone else," Toups said.

BARankin@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/BeaumontBeth