Hamilton County teacher victimized by 'revenge porn'

A Hamilton County teacher who is the target of alleged “revenge porn” has the full support of her school district. But when it comes to fighting back she — or any other Hoosier seeking justice against such a tormenter — has little recourse under Indiana law.

At least 20 states have passed laws since 2014 criminalizing the unauthorized distribution or posting on the Internet of images of an adult in a state of nudity or in a sexual situation.

Indiana is not one of them — but that is not because lawmakers have not had an opportunity to protect victims of this growing trend. Proposed anti-harassment legislation, which covered adult “revenge porn,” was introduced this year in the Indiana General Assembly.

“Our law right now is not adequate to put a stop to this practice, which is becoming a terrible problem,” said State Rep. Christina Hale, D-Indianapolis, who introduced HB1535 in January.

But the proposed legislation died without receiving a hearing in the House Committee on Courts and Criminal Code, which met five times in January and February to consider 14 bills originating in the House.

“I tried and tried,” Hale said of her unsuccessful effort to convince the chairman to allow the committee to take up the legislation.

The failure of lawmakers to address the growing problem hit home recently in Hamilton County, when a schoolteacher became a victim. The situation, which first came to the attention of school officials during the previous school year, was revealed publicly in a letter officials of Hamilton Southeastern Schools sent Aug. 7 to some parents.

“Recently, and apparently timed to coincide with and disrupt the start of school, we received written communication from an anonymous sender about the same subject,” the letter said. “We know this communication has also been sent to some of our parents and even some outside of our school community. This communication falsely implies that the employee posted the images on social media.”

The letter from school officials said they first learned of the situation when they “began receiving anonymous letters with the same images accompanied by threats to ‘expose’ this information to the school community and media unless the teacher's employment was immediately terminated.”

Following a review with legal staff and law enforcement, the letter continued, school officials “determined that the employee had not in any manner authorized or consented to the public disclosure of these images.”

“Instead, it became apparent that the employee was in a difficult marital relationship and the posting was a breach of that relationship and the employee’s private life designed to embarrass the employee,” the letter continued. “While we would not approve of employees posting these images of themselves and would take immediate steps to address such actions, this was not the situation. The employee finished last school year without incident.”

School officials noted that many states — but not Indiana — “have criminal laws to specifically punish unauthorized postings such as the one that occurred here ... In short, there is increasing recognition that this type of anonymous and unauthorized dissemination of images is not acceptable.”

A school spokeswoman said the district would have no other comment on the matter.

Under the bill proposed earlier this year by Hale, the person responsible for distributing the images of the teacher could have been convicted of a B misdemeanor, a crime carrying a sentence of up to 180 days in jail and a fine of $1,000. The bill also would have allowed a victim to file a civil lawsuit against someone convicted of violating the criminal law to recover actual and punitive damages.

Louisiana is among the latest to adopt a bill criminalizing such action. The law that went into effect Aug. 1 carries a penalty of up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Lawmakers in North Carolina also are considering similar legislation.

The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative is one of the groups behind the growing number of new laws across the U.S., including 20 state laws adopted in 2014 and 2015.

That action brought to 25 the number of states that now have laws protecting victims of “revenge porn,” according to Mary Anne Franks, CCRI’s Legislative & Tech Policy Director. She said similar laws are being considered in about a dozen other states, and a federal law will be proposed in September.

“In the last two years, we have gone from three states having laws expressly prohibiting this to 25 states,” said Franks, who is a professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law. “There has been a lot of action on the part of state legislators who are starting to take this problem seriously.”

Franks said CCRI is pushing for the federal law to serve as a template for state lawmakers because many of the current state laws vary significantly. Some states, for instance, make the crime a misdemeanor, such as Hale’s proposal would have done. In other states, the unauthorized distribution of images of an adult who is nude or engaged in a sex act is a felony, carrying penalties of up to five years in prison.

The two options, Franks said, have advantages and disadvantages. Misdemeanor laws are often more palatable to legislators concerned about law enforcement resources and prison overcrowding, but making the crime a felony may help law enforcement agencies justify investing the time and resources to conduct investigations.

Franks said there also are First Amendment considerations, so her group suggests narrowly defining the illegal act to the unauthorized distribution of actual photographs or videos of an adult engaged in a sexual act or nude. She said the law recently adopted in Illinois is a good model for other states.

In Indiana, without any such law, Franks said it is even legal for someone to distribute images of an adult victim being raped.

Underage victims are generally protected under child pornography laws, Franks added, but there is another side to those laws that can create a disincentive for reporting. She said a teen girl who sends a nude photograph to her boyfriend, for example, could be charged with production of child pornography is she goes to police to file a complaint about the boyfriend distributing the image.

Sexually explicit photographs have been around as long as there have been cameras, explained Annmarie Chiarini, the CCRI’s victims services director.

What has changed is that those images are now in a digital format and there are so many options for distributing them, from posting one on a person’s Facebook page, to sharing them on one or several of the estimated 3,000 “revenge porn” sites on the Internet.

The scope of the unauthorized distribution of “revenge porn,” sometimes also called non-consensual porn, “is absolutely tremendous,” Chiarini added.

She knows firsthand; she was a victim before she started helping others. Chiarini said the CCRI has assisted more than 4,000 victims in the past 30 months, and officials suspect that is only a small percentage of the total.

“Many victims are too ashamed to report or don’t know where to go,” she explained. “Sometimes when they turn to law enforcement, they are turned away or degraded or made to feel like it is their fault.”

While people can and will make moral judgments about victims, Chiarini said most intimate and sexual photographs and videos are made with an understanding that they are and will remain private. Blaming the victim, she added, is wrong — akin to blaming a rape victim or telling a person that if they had stayed home they would not have been mugged or involved in an accident. And some victims were secretly photographed, never even aware their images were being captured on camera.

Research by the organization revealed that a vast majority of victims — somewhere around 80 percent — are women. The motives of perpetrators run from making money to shaming or otherwise hurting the victims, often in a move to exact revenge for a breakup.

Franks, the law professor and CCRI legislative director, said she is willing to help Indiana officials craft a fair and effective law. And that still could happen — as soon as later this year when the Interim Study Committee on Corrections and Criminal Code meets.

“I am aware of the recent increase in the use of private images and videos as a means of revenge — an action which has the potential to damage a person’s reputation and career,” State Rep. Cindy Kirchhofer, R-Beech Grove, said in an email to The Star.

After Hale’s bill failed to get a hearing, Kirchhofer authored HR 70 urging lawmakers “to study various topics pertaining to emerging electronic platforms and the impact they have on crime” including sexual assault, blackmail and bullying. The topic was assigned to the committee but is not on the agenda for its first meeting Aug. 18.

“Over the next few months, I look forward to studying this topic in the Interim Study Committee on Corrections and Criminal Code.” Kirchhofer said in the email. “As we work to protect Hoosiers statewide, this in-depth study will help us to determine the best course of action moving forward.”

Call Star reporter Tim Evans at (317) 444-6204 and follow him on Twitter: @starwatchtim