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JACK: Okay, right off the bat, I want to give a content warning. We’re gonna get

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into some sexually explicit stuff in this episode. We’re gonna talk about nudity and

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there’s gonna be some swearing, so this episode is for mature listeners. You’ve been warned. Oh,

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and by the way, I give these warnings because a lot of you tell me you listen

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with your little kids, which I think is amazing. Hi, kids. But, sorry, kids.

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Okay, so, have you ever had your nude photos leaked online? You probably have. [MUSIC] You

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just might not know it, because some insane stuff is going on out there. Let me explain. First,

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law enforcement has access to some pretty crazy tools; databases that scrape the internet and

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then store a whole bunch of information on a person. I guess it’s used to help conduct

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investigations so they can quickly and easily get a whole bunch of information on a person.

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They can get your marital status or your address, your job, salary, kind of car, flight records,

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social media accounts, and of course, photos of you. Well, some cops have been caught abusing

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this tool. One cop was caught looking for dates on Tinder, which is fine. Cops can look for dates

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on Tinder. But the thing that he was doing was he was looking up his matches in this police

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database. Another cop was using the database to stalk some woman he was into, and another cop,

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Bryan, oof; he tried to see if he could use the tool to find nude photos of women on it.

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He used his access to gain a bunch of information on women, and then he

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worked with a hacker to break into the women’s accounts and find nude photos of them. Yeah,

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a cop was abusing his power to steal nude photos of women and then was trying to extort them with

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the images he found. He went to prison for that, but that story doesn’t even matter if a cop did

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it. The idea that a hacker can break into your account and steal private photos off your phone

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is a big problem. I’ve read countless stories of guys planting cameras in places they shouldn’t be,

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like women’s bathrooms or changing rooms, and with cameras getting smaller and harder to notice,

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this problem persists. But actually, a lot of you just put surveillance cameras right

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up in your homes yourself. ADT, for example, is a security company that allows you to put

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cameras inside your home to keep watch over your safety. But guess what? There was an ADT employee

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who was caught abusing his access and was spying on women and people having sex in their homes,

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taking screenshots of them and stuff. Oh, and let’s not forget about LOVEINT.

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This is a term used for when intelligence officials use their spying power to spy on

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love interests. There has been some reported cases that people in the NSA have used their access to

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the national surveillance infrastructure to check if a spouse is cheating or to keep a closer eye

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on someone they’re interested in. So, this is case after case of how your nude photos could

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be leaked without you doing anything wrong. Just think about all this next time you see a camera,

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which you probably see a camera a million times a day. With all our connected and smart devices,

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we are not the only ones who can control them, and the people who do have access to

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your camera can and will abuse that access. Or maybe the camera is just insecure and someone

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else who shouldn’t have access to it will get in. [MUSIC] Cameras are now ubiquitous in our lives,

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and I just want you to be aware that you shouldn’t trust it to keep your

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private life private. I mean, just think about all the places you’re

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naked in front of a camera. Everyone takes their phone to the bathroom now, don’t they?

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(INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of

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the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

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JACK: Okay, so, let’s just get to know you to get started with.

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What’s your name and what was your life like before all this started?

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MADISON: My name is Madison and gosh, that’s — the first question you ask me is

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already very hard ‘cause I kind of don’t remember what my life was before this.

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JACK: No problem, Madison. I’m here to help. [MUSIC] So,

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Madison grew up in Florida, and after high school went to attend a college in Florida.

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MADISON: I was studying marketing and communications.

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JACK: Madison has a twin sister named Christine.

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CHRISTINE: Yeah.

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MADISON: Yeah, so, my twin sister and I actually went to school at the same college.

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JACK: Christine was working on becoming a lawyer, and while there at school, Christine met a guy.

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CHRISTINE: Dana was in a fraternity and I was in a sorority, and we were paired

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up to do homecoming together. He was the president of his fraternity at the time,

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and I was nominated for the homecoming queen for my sorority.

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JACK: Dana, what were you working on in school?

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DANA: I’m an airline pilot, so that’s what I was

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working on. I learned to fly in college. I’m an aviation major.

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JACK: Dana was pretty active in his fraternity at the time; hanging out with the boys, bonding

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with them, developing lifelong relationships with some of them. But he fancied Christine the most.

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[MUSIC] So, Dana and Christine started dating in college. She’d even come by and hang out

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with the fraternity boys sometimes, too. She got to know some of them fairly well, and of course,

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Dana would get to know Christine’s twin sister Madison over time, too.

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DANA: I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Mary Kate and Ashley, you know,

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but that was their idols when they were growing up, and they have — we can solve

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any crime by dinnertime; that’s the way these two have been since they were five years old.

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MADISON: I was about nineteen or twenty, and I had woken up and I

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remember having — an acquaintance from high school [MUSIC] had DMed me and was like,

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hey, someone’s harassing you on the internet and they’re posting photos of you and stuff,

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right? I was just like, what? No. Send me links. What’s going on?

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JACK: Sexually explicit pictures of Madison were posted on the internet publicly for anyone to see.

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MADISON: In the photographs I was covered, but — I call them nip slips.

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JACK: So, these photos were part of a photoshoot she did with a photographer in Florida. They

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weren’t supposed to show any nudity. But as she was moving around the photoshoot, yeah, her nipple

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became partially visible for a few photos, but these photos should have only been seen

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between her and her photographer. Nobody should have seen this nip slip. How did this happen?

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MADISON: I still to this day don’t know exactly where people got those from.

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JACK: Where was it posted?

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MADISON: So, there was 4chan, which is the big one that I’m sure you’re aware of.

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JACK: Mm-hm.

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MADISON: There was — at one point I think it was moe.com and 4archive, which is a

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4chan archive site. There’s motherless.com. There’s a few more, but 4chan and the 4chan

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archive are the top big ones that are the bad news bears kinda websites that people go on.

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JACK: Okay, not only were her photos put up there,

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but the person who posted it was saying things like,

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help me find more nude photos of her, and posted her name and information along with the photos.

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MADISON: [MUSIC] Yeah, I think it was my full name,

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my Snapchat, my Facebook, and my phone number.

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JACK: Can you imagine waking up to a whole bunch of posts on different

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websites with your partially-nude photos up there with someone calling for people

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to target you and hurt you and get more nude photos of you? Ugh. Sounds awful.

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MADISON: I think my immediate reaction was — just kind of in shock and not knowing who was

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trying to hurt me. I think that was the scariest part, is that this was someone that may or may

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not have known me but they’re trying to hurt me, and not knowing who it was. So, it’s very scary.

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JACK: The way 4chan works is everyone on there is anonymous. So, there’s not many notes that

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you can take to try to figure out who this might be. It’s an anonymous user, and now, since the

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post had her social media profile listed, she was getting some weird messages and texts.

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MADISON: [MUSIC] That was horrible because literally my phone was blowing up nonstop at

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certain times. Of course, it’s never noon on a Tuesday. It’s like, 3:00, 4:00 AM on

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a Monday when you have to work the next day, you know? So, it was pretty bad. Even little things,

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like — it sounds so stupid, but in order to turn my phone off, I had to get an alarm clock. Our

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phones are our alarm clocks, you know? So, I would, in the middle of the night,

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have to turn my phone off and then I would sleep in and be late to work or something

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because I just wanted some sort of sleep to be able to have a normal day the next day. So,

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I think the phone was the worst part at that point. People would reach out to me,

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so in the beginning I would be like, oh, who is this? Kind of try to get it out of

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them who it was, and at that point I don’t think I knew that it was multiple people,

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you know? So, it just took a really long time to even just grasp the whole end game

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of what people are trying to do and how they’re doing it. It obviously didn’t get me very far.

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JACK: She was saving all the messages though, and phone numbers and usernames that were messaging

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her in case any of this made sense later. It wasn’t just one time; whoever had posted this

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was posting it relentlessly over and over and over again, week after week, continuing this campaign

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against her. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like having her nudes posted. She didn’t like the

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harassment. She wanted these messages to stop. But how do you get it to stop? I think because

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it’s such an embarrassing situation, it’s hard to ask for help from anyone. What are you gonna do,

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ask your dad to help you track down who stole photos of your partially-exposed nipples? No,

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god. She had a boyfriend, though, and asked him for help. So, he started looking into it. Because

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she was so close to her twin sister Christine, she eventually went to Christine in a panic.

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CHRISTINE: Okay, let’s just take a beat. This’ll fizzle out. You’re young. It’s not a big deal. So,

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then it kept getting worse and worse and worse. So, we ended up trying to report it to the

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police. So, I was kind of involved just helping my twin sister interact with the police station,

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researching. At this point I’m in law school or about to go to law school,

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so — not that I was a professional at this point, but I was equipped a little bit better

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to do some research, to contact some people. So, that’s initially how I first got involved,

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is truly just trying to help her deal with this terrible thing that was happening.

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JACK: They had to sit down and learn how these websites operate, and it’s such a mess for these

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sisters to even be on 4chan studying this, because that place is absolutely awful. [MUSIC] The amount

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of gore and pornography that they must have seen probably scarred their eyes for life. It’s an ugly

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place. It’s the underbelly of the internet, and they were there trying to find the moderators,

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wondering why posts disappear after a while. Like, where do they go? Can you message other users

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here? Can you ask the site to take down posts? What is this weird language people are using?

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Sauce, winds, sage? What other sites are scraping this site, listening, watching, archiving? And how

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do you get those sites to take down photos, and are there any legal implications to any of this?

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So, while Christine was studying that, Madison and her boyfriend took a trip down south to the

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Florida Keys. Now, one thing the Florida Keys are known for are beautiful sunsets, and Madison was

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on the beach there watching a beautiful sunset. She took her phone out and snapped a photo of it.

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She posted it on Snapchat and almost immediately got a text message to her phone from a stranger.

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MADISON: I got a message saying, oh, that’s a beautiful sunset that you

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just saw. I hope you’re having fun in the Keys with Jeff, my boyfriend at the time.

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JACK: Leave her alone! Don’t bother people like this. Let people just enjoy their vacation without

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creeping all over them. This freaked out Madison. She was rattled by this. Who’s watching her

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Snapchat that carefully? Wait a second; that’s a great question. Who’s watching her Snapchat?

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MADISON: [MUSIC] Snapchat has — you can see who viewed the images, you know? So,

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I immediately went to my Snapchat and screenshot the people that had seen the photograph. So,

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I was like, it has to be one of those — at that point, I think thirty-five people had

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seen it. It wasn’t a lot of people but it wasn’t like one person, you know? So,

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I immediately went and screenshot it really quick and just kind of kept it in my back pocket.

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JACK: Okay, good clue to grab, because this really narrows it down. This harassment was going on so

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long that she had locked down her socials to be private. Only the people she knew were allowed to

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see the photos that she was posting. So, her harasser might be someone she knew?

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MADISON: Those thirty-five people were my suspects at that point,

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and this was probably two years into the harassment. It was a while with the harassment.

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JACK: Two years.

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MADISON: Yeah.

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JACK: Two years. Oh my gosh. We haven’t even

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got started yet and already two years. This is so awful.

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MADISON: Yeah.

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JACK: Two years of harassment. I thought this was like, months into it.

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MADISON: No.

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JACK: Now, being harassed so bad for so long wears a person out. It’s heavy work to sort

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through 4chan or try to connect these dots, not something you want to be doing while on

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vacation. You want to get away from that shit, not scoop it up and sniff it. So,

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she sent this information to her sister and really tried not to let it bother her,

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but the harassing posts and text messages just kept coming in,

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more and more. Whoever this was continued posting to all these websites the same nip-slip photos

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and her contact details, and people were calling her and messaging her and stuff.

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MADISON: Yes, and then at some point he kind of upped the ante and was giving out my address to

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my home, [MUSIC] my parents’ social media handles, my sister’s social media handles,

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and extra information. That was probably actually around the same time that the Keys situation

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happened, probably that same week or two. He had put together a collage of photos and information

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that was some nude photos of me, some Facebook, LinkedIn profile pictures of me, my family,

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all their information below my — a picture of me and my family, my home address, and different

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information. So, around that time, I think he was definitely kind of upping his ante and was

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probably getting bored with what he had been doing prior to that. So, having my personal address

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out there was definitely very scary knowing how many people go on those websites to try

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to harass and hurt innocent women and children. That kind of was an added scare factor, you know?

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JACK: This upset her, obviously, deeply. It’s debilitating. How can you focus on work when

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texts are coming in all the time? How can you relax at home when your phone’s ringing all

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the time? She was asking her boyfriend for help, and he was looking into it,

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and he was actually getting pretty deep into the investigation himself.

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MADISON: [MUSIC] So, I think at some point — and we really don’t know — like,

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I never got the full grasp of what he was doing, but at some point, him going — allegedly going

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and trying to help on the IT aspect of it, to hunt down IP addresses or whatnot,

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I think he somehow got caught up in the middle of communicating with the perpetrator and back,

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and then was going back and forth with him through e-mails, which I do know for a fact

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they were e-mailing back and forth. I think that at some point he — when him and I were breaking up

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for multiple reasons, not just this situation, I think that he might have just been like, screw it,

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I’m just gonna send him some additional photos of Madison. He also sent a couple photos of my

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sister from a photoshoot as well. So, during that time, he had made the situation — like,

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added fuel to the fire, essentially, and made the situation a thousand times worse.

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JACK: What the hell? So, her boyfriend found the guy doing this and gave him more photos? What?

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Okay, yeah, so how — I mean, we were talking about nip slips before. What are we talking about now?

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MADISON: It was very graphic stuff. There were — him and I were in a long-distance relationship,

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so he had an arsenal of stuff from video chats with him and I. Just very explicit;

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full vagina, full body, everything, videos and photographs. So, it wasn’t even just photographs.

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JACK: Not good. This was the stuff that was now getting posted over and over again,

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nonstop. She knew her boyfriend — well, now ex-boyfriend — must have been the one that

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was leaking this since he was the only one with these images and videos. Things were

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rocky between them. They were actually bad, so it’s a possibility that he did this maybe to

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hurt her or something. But wait; her sister’s nude photos were in there, too. What is going

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on there? How did he get that? Christine, what photo did you — did he post of you?

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CHRISTINE: There was one photo that was — I didn’t

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even know existed. It was an implied boudoir photoshoot.

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JACK: Okay, so, there was a couple of nude photos of Christine in this,

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and these photos are gonna take a moment to explain, but I think it’s worth it,

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so stay with me. [MUSIC] So, implied boudoir photos have no nudity. Everything is covered

00:20:11.160 --> 00:20:17.200
up. That’s the implied part. It’s teasing, it’s evocative, but there are no private parts exposed.

00:20:17.200 --> 00:20:22.520
Christine has the photos from that shoot, and there simply weren’t any nude photos in there.

00:20:22.520 --> 00:20:28.160
On top of that, she never shared any of the photos from this boudoir photoshoot publicly,

00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:34.040
never posted any of it to social media, but there were nude photos of her from that exact photoshoot

00:20:34.040 --> 00:20:42.040
up on the internet. How did that happen? By this time, Christine had married Dana.

00:20:42.040 --> 00:20:47.120
DANA: I was loosely aware of what was going on when Madison just — they kinda were handling

00:20:47.120 --> 00:20:52.600
it amongst themselves for the most part. This kind of situation is like, the less people that

00:20:52.600 --> 00:20:56.440
know about it the better because you can’t trust anybody when it comes to this type of thing. So,

00:20:56.440 --> 00:21:00.480
I sort of let them do their thing, and then obviously when you get wind that your wife’s

00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:06.880
nude photos are online, I kinda — that’s when it really grabbed my attention and when I really

00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:11.560
started diving into this. It almost felt wrong for me to dive into it to begin with ‘cause they’re

00:21:11.560 --> 00:21:16.560
naked photos of my sister-in-law, you know what I mean? I don’t — these websites are horrible,

00:21:16.560 --> 00:21:22.560
awful places. You feel dirty just looking at it. But once Christine was up on the

00:21:22.560 --> 00:21:27.280
internet and we knew that was happening, I decided this needed to stop and I was

00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:31.840
going to put whatever skills I had in this world to try and make that happen.

00:21:31.840 --> 00:21:38.760
JACK: Okay, a new ally joins the fight; Dana the pilot. First he’s like, wait a minute,

00:21:38.760 --> 00:21:41.660
where do these photos come from? How could he have gotten them?

00:21:41.660 --> 00:21:49.080
DANA: So, these shoots — the photographer might take 2,000 pictures in the span of an hour, and if

00:21:49.080 --> 00:21:54.120
you load those all onto an image viewer and just space bar through them, it’s basically like you’re

00:21:54.120 --> 00:21:59.520
watching a low-frame-rate video because he’s just snapping photos constantly, multiple per second,

00:21:59.520 --> 00:22:04.280
so it’s almost like a video when you piece them together. So, the girls, when they would change

00:22:04.280 --> 00:22:09.640
positions — if they’re hiding their breasts with their arms, whatever they’re doing as far as doing

00:22:09.640 --> 00:22:14.320
these kind of boudoir-implied nude photos, at some point they’re gonna change position or turn to a

00:22:14.320 --> 00:22:19.020
certain angle or something and there’s gonna be a nipple or something. What the boyfriend did…

00:22:19.020 --> 00:22:21.994
CHRISTINE: Yeah, we call those nip-slips. [LAUGHS]

00:22:21.994 --> 00:22:26.840
DANA: So, what the boyfriend did was go through 1,200 photos on a CD of my wife and pull out

00:22:26.840 --> 00:22:31.280
the two frames where there was a nipple in it, found it, saved it, sent it to the guy.

00:22:31.280 --> 00:22:37.080
JACK: Man, that’s a lot of work to go through hundreds of photos to find the one or two with

00:22:37.080 --> 00:22:45.600
a nip slip. But still, these photos, they were on a CD in a box in her parents’ house mixed in with

00:22:45.600 --> 00:22:51.200
some other photos of Madison. Christine didn’t even know these nip slips were in there. So,

00:22:51.200 --> 00:22:58.280
how did he get those photos? Well, as you may know, photos on a CD are kind of clunky to deal

00:22:58.280 --> 00:23:03.760
with. Our laptops and phones don’t have a place to insert the CD. So, a while back,

00:23:03.760 --> 00:23:09.760
Madison just went through that box and grabbed a bunch of CDs and copied them onto Dropbox

00:23:09.760 --> 00:23:16.800
to make it easier to access. Well, Madison’s boyfriend somehow gained access to her Dropbox,

00:23:16.800 --> 00:23:20.960
and he looked through these photos of her sister, Christine, which is where he

00:23:20.960 --> 00:23:27.960
found these nip slips, and then sent them to this guy, their harasser. What a big problem

00:23:27.960 --> 00:23:33.560
that they have to deal with now. I want you to understand; Christine’s nude photos being on the

00:23:33.560 --> 00:23:41.080
internet like this is the least likely thing to ever happen. She doesn’t have nude photos.

00:23:41.080 --> 00:23:45.720
The fact that a couple were accidentally taken that she had no idea even existed and

00:23:45.720 --> 00:23:52.240
were in a box in her parents’ house, offline even, somehow made their way onto a revenge porn site,

00:23:52.240 --> 00:23:58.840
it’s so unfair. Some people like to victim-shame in this situation; oh, you dirty girl, that’s what

00:23:58.840 --> 00:24:04.040
you get for taking nude photos. Fuck right off with that attitude. Christine is a good lady,

00:24:04.040 --> 00:24:09.280
and if this kind of stuff can happen to people who have done everything right, then clearly this is

00:24:09.280 --> 00:24:15.520
not the victim’s fault. We should be helping her and other people in this situation, not blaming

00:24:15.520 --> 00:24:21.040
them. [MUSIC] I’ll even take this a step further; at least once a month some dude e-mails me telling

00:24:21.040 --> 00:24:26.240
me that they’re in a similar situation where they met some lady online, things got hot and heavy,

00:24:26.240 --> 00:24:32.400
he sent a dick pic, but she turned out to be a guy and just wanted something to use to extort him.

00:24:32.400 --> 00:24:38.200
Now he’s asking me, what do I do? They want me to pay $500 or they’ll send my nude photo to my boss.

00:24:38.200 --> 00:24:42.440
You know what? I sympathize with him, too, because the person holding his dick pic for

00:24:42.440 --> 00:24:48.720
ransom is breaking the law. They are scamming him, extorting him, harassing him, and I don’t

00:24:48.720 --> 00:24:54.120
like that. I don’t like harassers getting away with their bullshit no matter who the victim is.

00:24:54.120 --> 00:25:00.280
The victim is irrelevant. It’s the criminal who should be blamed and punished for this. Sorry;

00:25:00.280 --> 00:25:05.000
I kinda lost the plot there. This topic of online harassment is a sensitive one for me. I feel like

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.040
it’s gotten way out of hand. Every day I go online and I just see this kind of stuff,

00:25:09.040 --> 00:25:15.240
and it’s like a kick to my heart every time. Stop harassing people, okay? We’ve got better things

00:25:15.240 --> 00:25:20.560
to do with our time. If you’re a harasser, just stop. I don’t care why you think your

00:25:20.560 --> 00:25:27.280
actions are justified. Just stop. Find a way to make a positive impact on someone’s life, not a

00:25:27.280 --> 00:25:34.620
negative one. Let it go. Let’s work on making the world a better place, not a worse place.

00:25:34.620 --> 00:25:43.840
MADISON: So, we were hiding it from our parents, and not that our parents aren’t — like,

00:25:43.840 --> 00:25:50.560
they wouldn’t — they’re supportive parents. It’s not like we’re from a

00:25:50.560 --> 00:25:57.400
strict Catholic family that’s gonna shun us and send us away to boarding school,

00:25:57.400 --> 00:26:04.080
you know? But it was still just that embarrassment factor of like, we’re — or

00:26:04.080 --> 00:26:10.320
we’d like to think we’re educated, smart women, and we somehow got ourselves in this situation.

00:26:10.320 --> 00:26:12.960
JACK: Yeah, and I can’t imagine wanting to show my dad this is

00:26:12.960 --> 00:26:16.400
what’s going on out there. It would just be the most awful experience.

00:26:16.400 --> 00:26:19.520
MADISON: Exactly. No matter how cool your parents are,

00:26:19.520 --> 00:26:22.760
it’s just not a conversation you want to have with them.

00:26:22.760 --> 00:26:25.760
JACK: So, how did they become aware?

00:26:25.760 --> 00:26:35.160
MADISON: I mean, they kind of became aware when they were getting unsolicited images of myself.

00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:42.840
I don’t think ever my sister, but definitely of me. But they were in the same situation of like,

00:26:42.840 --> 00:26:48.000
uh, we’ll just delete this, not knowing the seriousness of it because we didn’t tell them

00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:53.880
the seriousness of it. So, my dad’s like, yeah, I just deleted the couple things they

00:26:53.880 --> 00:26:59.680
sent me ‘cause it was awkward, you know? So, he kinda didn’t even tell us in the beginning.

00:26:59.680 --> 00:27:06.000
JACK: Man, how awful that must have been to be a parent and see someone send you a nude photo

00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:12.000
of your daughter. But then for Madison to find out later that her parents already saw it but were too

00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:19.200
embarrassed to say anything about it? It’s such a messy situation to figure out for everyone. Okay,

00:27:19.200 --> 00:27:24.140
so, Madison and Christine have this steaming pile of bullshit they’re dealing with now.

00:27:24.140 --> 00:27:31.600
MADISON: Yeah, it was, and it was just because — I don’t think that — like,

00:27:31.600 --> 00:27:34.794
am I allowed to say it was fucked up? [LAUGHS]

00:27:34.794 --> 00:27:37.463
JACK: Yeah, go for it.

00:27:37.463 --> 00:27:42.120
MADISON: Okay. I was like, uh — I’ll be able to talk more smoothly if I can say what’s on my mind.

00:27:42.120 --> 00:27:47.000
JACK: Absolutely. I think this one is rated R to begin with from the get-go.

00:27:47.000 --> 00:27:55.360
MADISON: Yeah, so, at that point, Christine, Dana,

00:27:55.360 --> 00:28:05.280
and I were getting very good at creeping the dark web and finding information on

00:28:05.280 --> 00:28:15.400
ourselves to do takedowns and just kinda clean stuff up. So, we had successfully

00:28:15.400 --> 00:28:24.960
figured out how to take down images from these websites, so we were doing it pretty quickly.

00:28:24.960 --> 00:28:29.280
JACK: What’s the language you use to tell them, hey, I want this removed?

00:28:29.280 --> 00:28:32.160
MADISON: DMCAs are the language.

00:28:32.160 --> 00:28:37.760
JACK: It’s interesting, right? Most nudes that get leaked like this are selfies, and the thing is

00:28:37.760 --> 00:28:42.680
is if you took the photo, you automatically have the copyright to that photo. You don’t have to go

00:28:42.680 --> 00:28:47.720
register it with the Copyright Office or anything. It’s automatically your copyrighted work. So,

00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:53.120
if someone uses a photo you took without your permission, that’s a copyright violation. So, tap

00:28:53.120 --> 00:28:57.080
on the sign. Point to the law and say, hey, it’s illegal to post this without my permission. Take

00:28:57.080 --> 00:29:02.960
it down. A lot of sites do. Of course, it really helped that Christine was studying law and knew

00:29:02.960 --> 00:29:06.840
this stuff, and she wanted to be extra careful here and make sure both her feet were firmly

00:29:06.840 --> 00:29:12.080
planted in the law and it was on her side. So, she asked the photographer who took her photos,

00:29:12.080 --> 00:29:17.480
can we transfer the copyright to me? She did. She went through the US Copyright Office to get the

00:29:17.480 --> 00:29:23.200
copyright of her nip slips transferred to her so she could have more power at getting this removed.

00:29:23.200 --> 00:29:28.600
MADISON: [MUSIC] During this time I had multiple employers because it literally has spanned over a

00:29:28.600 --> 00:29:34.400
eight or nine-year period at this point. Managers had been called and harassed on my behalf,

00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:42.920
so they had seen LinkedIn or Facebook where I worked and they would call and harass and ask

00:29:42.920 --> 00:29:50.960
for my current boss at the time and kind of be like, do you know what’s on the internet

00:29:50.960 --> 00:29:59.120
of her? Just the typical harassment, but doing it to my bosses at the time.

00:29:59.120 --> 00:30:06.000
JACK: I don’t know. It’s just awful in every corner because there’s no escaping it,

00:30:06.000 --> 00:30:09.320
right? No matter where you end up going. You go on vacation; you’re harassed on

00:30:09.320 --> 00:30:14.184
vacation. You go to work; you’re harassed at work. At home; you’re harassed at home.

00:30:14.184 --> 00:30:18.120
MADISON: Mm-hm. We eventually had gotten — and told my parents because Christine and I had a

00:30:18.120 --> 00:30:24.160
mental breakdown one day and just started bawling, crying, and talking to our parents about it.

00:30:24.160 --> 00:30:28.580
JACK: What triggered the breakdown? Just ‘cause it was nonstop, right?

00:30:28.580 --> 00:30:30.800
MADISON: Yeah, I think it was just nonstop and we

00:30:30.800 --> 00:30:38.960
were trying our hardest and we were — emotions were high. Stress was high.

00:30:38.960 --> 00:30:41.760
JACK: When you went to tell your parents, do you — did it feel like

00:30:41.760 --> 00:30:46.060
you were telling them — like, they didn’t — you didn’t know they knew.

00:30:46.060 --> 00:30:54.560
MADISON: No, and they knew to an extent, but they had no idea how bad it had been because

00:30:54.560 --> 00:31:02.500
they only saw what they had gotten, you know? So, they didn’t know how bad it actually was.

00:31:02.500 --> 00:31:10.280
JACK: Yeah, ‘cause I just imagine the — oh my gosh, this is what’s been going on, and they’re

00:31:10.280 --> 00:31:16.140
like, yeah, we’ve been getting messages. We didn’t feel comfortable enough to talk to you about it.

00:31:16.140 --> 00:31:17.100
MADISON: Yeah, exactly.

00:31:17.100 --> 00:31:20.800
JACK: That’s how that conversation went. Oh my gosh.

00:31:20.800 --> 00:31:24.400
MADISON: Yeah, and then, other than that…

00:31:24.400 --> 00:31:27.720
JACK: That just fuels it, right? ‘Cause you’re already at a breakdown and then you’re like,

00:31:27.720 --> 00:31:34.520
what? You’ve seen it, too? They know you’re — aargh. You’d just — it’s worse. It’s not better.

00:31:34.520 --> 00:31:38.346
MADISON: Yeah, no. Not at all.

00:31:38.346 --> 00:31:40.480
JACK: [MUSIC] Now, because Christine is a lawyer,

00:31:40.480 --> 00:31:43.560
of course she wanted to use the legal system to sort this out.

00:31:43.560 --> 00:31:49.240
CHRISTINE: I help — well, so, my sister went into the sheriff’s department in Melbourne,

00:31:49.240 --> 00:31:57.120
Florida, and was turned away. This is also around the same time that the — Florida’s Non-Consensual

00:31:57.120 --> 00:32:02.560
Pornography Law is enacted. So, it’s not only harassing, stalking, a federal crime,

00:32:02.560 --> 00:32:07.480
it’s at this point actually illegal in the state of Florida, this exact thing. If you

00:32:07.480 --> 00:32:14.640
read the statute, it is — in layman’s terms, it is absolutely for this exact situation. So,

00:32:14.640 --> 00:32:19.920
she gets turned away and I’m like, oh, that’s bullshit. So, I’m gonna compile information

00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:24.720
for them. I’m gonna print out the statute out for you. I don’t live near her at this point,

00:32:24.720 --> 00:32:29.840
but I try to go in there with her when I’m in town one day. But I want to say it was a weekend

00:32:29.840 --> 00:32:35.160
or a holiday, and that division just wasn’t open. So, I was like, I’m gonna leave this binder with

00:32:35.160 --> 00:32:40.560
you. You’re gonna go in there and get someone to listen to you. Ultimately she went in there and

00:32:40.560 --> 00:32:51.320
they did not listen to her. I remember sending them an e-mail after the fact and being like,

00:32:51.320 --> 00:32:56.560
hey, I would be glad to come bring your — bring training to your officers on this,

00:32:56.560 --> 00:33:04.040
this new law. Clearly they don’t understand the law. Please provide training. I’m a newly

00:33:04.040 --> 00:33:09.040
sworn-in lawyer that would be happy to help you and train your officers with this new law. They

00:33:09.040 --> 00:33:14.880
did not like that e-mail and assured me that their officers were trained and doing their job.

00:33:14.880 --> 00:33:19.840
JACK: Oh, how frustrating. When she said Madison was turned away, the police didn’t even take her

00:33:19.840 --> 00:33:26.080
name or any information about the crimes she was reporting. It sounded like they absolutely

00:33:26.080 --> 00:33:35.200
did not care for her at all. But these sisters were tough and smart and weren’t gonna accept

00:33:35.200 --> 00:33:41.600
‘no’ for an answer. We’re gonna take a quick break here, but stay with us because when we come back,

00:33:41.600 --> 00:33:58.320
they start taking matters into their own hands. The two sisters, Madison and Christine,

00:33:58.320 --> 00:34:04.960
had been getting harassed by someone or a group of people for years, and it just kept getting

00:34:04.960 --> 00:34:11.120
worse and escalating to the point that they were experiencing mental breakdowns and were having a

00:34:11.120 --> 00:34:16.080
really hard time functioning. This harassment was seeping into every aspect of their lives,

00:34:16.080 --> 00:34:20.800
and it was nonstop. They were capturing everything they could and documenting it all,

00:34:20.800 --> 00:34:25.520
looking for clues as to who would be doing this, but they weren’t making any progress

00:34:25.520 --> 00:34:30.640
to solving this. But they were very tuned in to this activity, watching it closely.

00:34:30.640 --> 00:34:37.040
MADISON: What he’s posting, ‘cause how you — again, it’s so hard to explain this. We

00:34:37.040 --> 00:34:41.840
were so involved in the 4chan world for so long, it sounds crazy to normal people

00:34:41.840 --> 00:34:45.920
who probably — most — I wouldn’t know about this if it weren’t for this. So,

00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:52.120
on 4chan it’s anonymous, but then a lot of times they would take their conversations

00:34:52.120 --> 00:34:58.440
offline to Kik. K-I-K is the platform messaging system. Again, an anonymous messaging system,

00:34:58.440 --> 00:35:03.834
and I’m mansplaining this to someone who does this for a living, so I’ll stop now. [LAUGHS]

00:35:03.834 --> 00:35:08.520
JACK: Okay, so, Kik. I do want to add a few things about this. I did a whole episode about Kik;

00:35:08.520 --> 00:35:13.200
that’s Episode 93, and what I learned from doing that episode is Kik is a

00:35:13.200 --> 00:35:17.600
magnet for awful behavior. [MUSIC] It’s just a chat app like Discord or Slack,

00:35:17.600 --> 00:35:21.360
but what I’ve seen is there’s just no content moderation. So,

00:35:21.360 --> 00:35:26.520
chatrooms can become full of illegal activity, open to the public for anyone to find and join

00:35:26.520 --> 00:35:31.600
in. Why this app isn’t banned from the Google or Apple Store still is a mystery to me,

00:35:31.600 --> 00:35:35.760
but it’s very clear that Kik has a lot of problems and is basically a scourge

00:35:35.760 --> 00:35:41.200
of humanity. So, when this person was posting nude photos of Christine and Madison to 4chan,

00:35:41.200 --> 00:35:46.840
he was sometimes including his Kik username. You know, in case someone wanted to friend him.

00:35:46.840 --> 00:35:52.400
CHRISTINE: So, we were trying to tie those screen names that he’s leaving — so,

00:35:52.400 --> 00:35:56.200
the screen names that are attached to what he’s posting on 4chan, we’re seeing what

00:35:56.200 --> 00:36:01.760
those people are posting. We’re seeing, hey, Kik me at ‘insert Kik name here’, finding the

00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:06.520
ones that are connected to those specific Kik names, ‘cause again, it has to all be the same

00:36:06.520 --> 00:36:13.760
person. This particular person had a very weird way of typing in which there were three periods

00:36:13.760 --> 00:36:18.640
and it’s all spaced out. Not like a typical dot, dot, dot; it was like, dot, space, space, dot,

00:36:18.640 --> 00:36:23.840
space, space, dot. Just very odd. Like, that’s not how people typically talk even on the internet,

00:36:23.840 --> 00:36:28.080
especially on the internet. So, we’re using all these little clues to kinda figure out,

00:36:28.080 --> 00:36:33.120
alright, as a whole, let’s zoom out. What is this person interested in? What are they posting?

00:36:33.120 --> 00:36:38.720
JACK: Well, this is a nice little path to investigate, right? You’ve got a Kik

00:36:38.720 --> 00:36:45.840
username now. Well, going on Kik, you can’t really see what he’s up to there, but they

00:36:45.840 --> 00:36:53.600
were pretty familiar with searching 4chan. So, they looked through 4chan for that Kik username,

00:36:53.600 --> 00:36:59.600
and this opened them up to a huge trove of posts that he had been making to 4chan. Of course,

00:36:59.600 --> 00:37:04.840
they had to drive through this filth to make sense of it, but what they discovered was that

00:37:04.840 --> 00:37:09.820
he wasn’t harassing just the twins. He was posting nudes of other women, too.

00:37:09.820 --> 00:37:14.720
CHRISTINE: We find it’s the same five women and girls,

00:37:14.720 --> 00:37:17.790
‘cause some of them are underage at the time.

00:37:17.790 --> 00:37:25.080
JACK: Hm, interesting. He seemed to be obsessively posting nudes of the same five women. [MUSIC] He

00:37:25.080 --> 00:37:29.680
didn’t have a wide array of nudes that he was posting. He was focused about it,

00:37:29.680 --> 00:37:37.800
zoomed in to only five women, harassing each of them almost in a cycle, going through each of them

00:37:37.800 --> 00:37:45.240
and then back around to the first, making each of their lives hell. This is interesting because

00:37:45.240 --> 00:37:53.320
what’s the correlation here, right? Are these five women connected in any way? To start with, the

00:37:53.320 --> 00:37:58.720
sisters didn’t know any of these other victims, but this started a whole new investigation into

00:37:58.720 --> 00:38:05.080
each of these women. It actually helped that he was posting their phone numbers and socials. Some

00:38:05.080 --> 00:38:11.840
were in Florida near Christine and Madison, actually, but some were in New York. They had

00:38:11.840 --> 00:38:17.680
some ideas who might know all these people, but they weren’t sure. It seemed like someone they

00:38:17.680 --> 00:38:22.440
should know personally, but all the people who they suspected, there’s just no way it could be

00:38:22.440 --> 00:38:28.460
them. But still, the data they got from this Kik user was massive to their investigation.

00:38:28.460 --> 00:38:36.880
MADISON: Yeah, so, it was just a huge break. So, it was me, Christine, my sister, Dana, and then

00:38:36.880 --> 00:38:42.120
my friend John. All four of us were working on this at this time. So, once that happened and we

00:38:42.120 --> 00:38:50.640
got the Kik usernames kind of sorted and figured out that we could cross-reference it, I was like,

00:38:50.640 --> 00:38:55.480
oh my gosh, back to the Snapchat from — at this point, I think that was probably four or five

00:38:55.480 --> 00:39:04.880
years prior. It was a long time ago. [MUSIC] I went back to it and we — when I took the Snap of

00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:10.400
it, which was right after I got the message of ‘oh, what a beautiful sunset’, it was the last

00:39:10.400 --> 00:39:16.480
person that had viewed my Snap, and I didn’t even think that like, oh — I was so quick at Snapping

00:39:16.480 --> 00:39:23.080
it the second that he messaged me that it makes sense that it was the last person that saw it,

00:39:23.080 --> 00:39:30.680
because he went on there, saw it, messaged me, ‘hey, beautiful sunset’. I immediately went on,

00:39:30.680 --> 00:39:36.360
Snapped the screenshot of who saw it, and that all probably happened within a minute. So,

00:39:36.360 --> 00:39:43.520
it makes sense that — I’m like — at that point, I’m like, duh, this is the person. It has to be.

00:39:43.520 --> 00:39:45.320
JACK: What was his first name?

00:39:45.320 --> 00:39:47.440
MADISON: Christopher.

00:39:47.440 --> 00:39:54.800
JACK: Christopher. They figured it out. They unmasked their attacker. It had to

00:39:54.800 --> 00:39:59.760
be Christopher. All the signs pointed to him now, and the creepy part was

00:39:59.760 --> 00:40:04.960
they all knew Christopher. She had been friends with him on Snapchat for years,

00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:09.380
which was why he could see the photos there. Where do you know Christopher from?

00:40:09.380 --> 00:40:15.120
MADISON: We knew him from college. He was my brother-in-law of Dana’s

00:40:15.120 --> 00:40:21.600
fraternity brother at the college that Christine, Dana, and I went to.

00:40:21.600 --> 00:40:23.900
JACK: Wait, Dana, this is one of your friends?

00:40:23.900 --> 00:40:27.080
DANA: Yeah, that’s correct.

00:40:27.080 --> 00:40:31.680
JACK: What was your relationship to him back in the fraternity?

00:40:31.680 --> 00:40:37.600
DANA: You know, he was a close friend. He had been to my house that I grew up

00:40:37.600 --> 00:40:43.440
in in Connecticut and met my parents. We went to concerts together. I knew his family. I had Fourth

00:40:43.440 --> 00:40:50.200
of July out on Long Island with his dad and his brother. He wasn’t my best friend in the world,

00:40:50.200 --> 00:40:55.320
but certainly he was closer than most. He was a good friend of mine and I had

00:40:55.320 --> 00:40:59.268
known him for over a decade when this had all happened. It was…

00:40:59.268 --> 00:41:00.699
MADISON: He went to our wedding.

00:41:00.699 --> 00:41:04.428
DANA: It was insane. He was at our wedding. It’s insane.

00:41:04.428 --> 00:41:04.600
JACK: What? So…

00:41:04.600 --> 00:41:06.220
MADISON: With one of his other victims.

00:41:06.220 --> 00:41:10.560
JACK: So, know — having that history with him and then saying,

00:41:10.560 --> 00:41:15.140
wait, is it him, how does — what is your gut feeling out of that?

00:41:15.140 --> 00:41:20.920
DANA: I remember the night that we figured out it was him very vividly. This one will stick out

00:41:20.920 --> 00:41:29.000
to me for the rest of my life. I was getting home from a trip as an airline pilot, and I got a call

00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:35.400
from Madison. [MUSIC] I don’t ever receive phone calls from Madison. We don’t call; we text. So,

00:41:35.400 --> 00:41:41.920
if I get a phone call, something’s wrong. I pick up the phone and she’s like, I think we might know

00:41:41.920 --> 00:41:50.280
who it is. I’m like, really? She’s like, yeah, I’m pretty sure. I was like, well, spit it out.

00:41:50.280 --> 00:41:57.560
Don’t make me wait. She goes, Yankee. I’m like, come on. No fucking way. Right? First of all,

00:41:57.560 --> 00:42:02.200
one of my close friends. Second of all, I didn’t even think he was intelligent enough or tech-savvy

00:42:02.200 --> 00:42:06.880
enough to even figure out how 4chan worked. If you knew him well, it had to have taken him a while to

00:42:06.880 --> 00:42:13.320
figure it out. We are not dealing with a rocket surgeon here. So, I couldn’t — I told her — I was

00:42:13.320 --> 00:42:20.480
like, no way. Mind this, Jack; it had been years where anybody in the room could have been the guy,

00:42:20.480 --> 00:42:24.400
and there were accusations flung at just about anybody in our life. You know what I

00:42:24.400 --> 00:42:27.720
mean? It’s this guy, it’s that guy, it’s this guy, it’s your best friend, it’s — you know.

00:42:27.720 --> 00:42:32.120
JACK: Yeah, and I remember Madison telling me things like — just walking around the streets,

00:42:32.120 --> 00:42:38.427
like, why is that guy looking at me that way? Is he the guy? All these kind of just weird feelings.

00:42:38.427 --> 00:42:41.160
DANA: Right. Can you imagine? You know what I mean? If those are your photos on

00:42:41.160 --> 00:42:44.640
the internet and every single person in your life was a suspect, it’s gotta be horrible,

00:42:44.640 --> 00:42:51.720
right? I had heard them postulate that it could be one of my friends several times,

00:42:51.720 --> 00:42:55.600
and I always said, no, no, and I did exactly what I did on that night; I said, there’s no

00:42:55.600 --> 00:43:01.000
freaking way. It’s not him. One, I don’t think he’s got it in him. He’s not that malicious. Two,

00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:06.480
I think he’s too dumb to even figure all this out, you know? But it kinda rattled around in my brain

00:43:06.480 --> 00:43:12.360
and I couldn’t sleep that night. So, I got home and I started looking up the Kik names. [MUSIC]

00:43:12.360 --> 00:43:16.680
I started connecting the Kik names, and that’s what you can do on 4chan. Or, you can’t do it even

00:43:16.680 --> 00:43:21.800
on 4chan ‘cause it disappears within two hours. But the 4chan archive sites, you can search them,

00:43:21.800 --> 00:43:26.480
and that’s how we sort of tied him to all these posts, was he had about five or six Kik names,

00:43:26.480 --> 00:43:30.480
and I just searched the Kik names. It would — all these random women would come up,

00:43:30.480 --> 00:43:36.080
including my wife and her sister. Then there was one that stuck out that night and it was a girl, a

00:43:36.080 --> 00:43:42.600
young girl. Looked to be thirteen, fourteen years old in a Catholic school outfit that was posted by

00:43:42.600 --> 00:43:49.520
the same user as the ones who were — as the user that was harassing my wife and my sister-in-law.

00:43:49.520 --> 00:43:55.080
I downloaded the photo. It was not a nude photo. It was just a girl. It was a girl and the text

00:43:55.080 --> 00:43:58.120
attached to it was horrifying; something like, I want nudes of this girl or I want

00:43:58.120 --> 00:44:06.560
to rape her or something. So, I download this photo and there’s an embroidered crest or logo

00:44:06.560 --> 00:44:14.520
on her school uniform. It’s kinda pixelated but I down — I enhanced it and I sharpened it

00:44:14.520 --> 00:44:19.920
and I sharpened it, and I finally was able to make out the words on this photo. It turns out

00:44:19.920 --> 00:44:28.960
it was a Catholic girls’ middle school, middle school in Daytona. So, I said, hm, okay, well,

00:44:28.960 --> 00:44:34.240
I know he’s got family in Daytona. Maybe there’s something here. So, you jump on Facebook and

00:44:34.240 --> 00:44:39.440
within ten minutes I was able to find the girl’s name and her mom and dad’s name, and they were

00:44:39.440 --> 00:44:46.480
mutual friends and identified family members on his Facebook page. That was his little cousin,

00:44:46.480 --> 00:44:52.560
and that’s kinda when it all hit. Like, holy shit, it’s him. Then once you had that key piece of

00:44:52.560 --> 00:45:00.040
information, you keep going back through the other women that he’s posting on the 4chan site and you

00:45:00.040 --> 00:45:05.400
cross-reference it to Facebook. Mutual friend; bang. Mutual friend; bang. Mutual friend, and

00:45:05.400 --> 00:45:11.940
there it was. We knew who it was that night, and I just — I absolutely couldn’t fucking believe it.

00:45:11.940 --> 00:45:15.000
JACK: Yeah, I imagine a long stare out the window. Like,

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.580
what was — why did I have this person in my life at all?

00:45:19.580 --> 00:45:25.320
DANA: Oh my god, and the guilt. Can you imagine? If the twins had never met me,

00:45:25.320 --> 00:45:31.200
they never meet this guy. You know what I mean? Just the weight of guilt. I invited

00:45:31.200 --> 00:45:34.680
him to social functions all the time. He was a bit of an outcast and an outsider.

00:45:34.680 --> 00:45:39.640
I’d invite him in just ‘cause he was a friend of mine, almost like a sympathy invite to stuff,

00:45:39.640 --> 00:45:44.600
and I was the one who introduced him to my wife and my sister-in-law,

00:45:44.600 --> 00:45:50.620
and he in turn tried to destroy their lives. There’s a lot of guilt involved with that.

00:45:50.620 --> 00:45:54.400
JACK: Wow, they did it. They figured out who the asshole was,

00:45:54.400 --> 00:45:59.640
and they were all kind of shell-shocked by it. This guy who was at their wedding

00:45:59.640 --> 00:46:06.480
did this? What a monster. You think you know someone, but then this happens. But Christine,

00:46:06.480 --> 00:46:11.240
being a lawyer, she wanted more evidence and kept going through the Kik posts.

00:46:11.240 --> 00:46:17.120
CHRISTINE: We found this random post that had nothing to do with any of the girls or women,

00:46:17.120 --> 00:46:25.240
but it was a photo that was what we assumed to be his house. We actually reached out to

00:46:25.240 --> 00:46:35.320
his fiance at the time and was like, hey, do you know — are you still with this person?

00:46:35.320 --> 00:46:42.880
Is this your house? Kind of thing. She’s like, yeah, that’s my house. She kinda confirmed for

00:46:42.880 --> 00:46:50.260
us that that was where she had lived with him. So, we had that as a clue as well.

00:46:50.260 --> 00:46:55.240
JACK: Okay, alright, they’ve really got this guy nailed now. All of the harassment,

00:46:55.240 --> 00:46:59.880
all of the nudes, all of the nightmare was stemming from this one person. Yeah,

00:46:59.880 --> 00:47:03.240
he was able to get others to join in on the harassment, but if it wasn’t for him,

00:47:03.240 --> 00:47:08.520
nobody else would be harassing these women. Just knowing this is such a relief in a way. You’re

00:47:08.520 --> 00:47:13.520
dealing with the darkness and anonymity of the internet. You have no idea how many people are

00:47:13.520 --> 00:47:20.320
behind your harassment. But now it’s clear. It’s one guy, Christopher, and they know everything

00:47:20.320 --> 00:47:26.520
about him. But he didn’t know they were on to him, and so he kept up his harassment campaign,

00:47:26.520 --> 00:47:31.023
calling bosses, sending nudes to their friends, and asking others to join in.

00:47:31.023 --> 00:47:38.880
MADISON: [MUSIC] I think the nature of online cyber-harassment is that you don’t have anywhere

00:47:38.880 --> 00:47:47.240
to run to. So, if you’re getting bullied or physically harassed, you’re like, okay, I can

00:47:47.240 --> 00:47:56.240
at least run home and retreat to my room and, you know, be depressed in bed. But you’re constantly

00:47:56.240 --> 00:48:04.880
being harassed and you can’t forget anything at home because it’s just nonstop being harassed.

00:48:04.880 --> 00:48:08.000
JACK: You know that some women have killed themselves over this.

00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:17.320
MADISON: Yes. One of the victims, she actually tried to kill herself as well. So,

00:48:17.320 --> 00:48:25.640
one of the girls, she had a really rough time and tried committing suicide as well.

00:48:25.640 --> 00:48:30.458
JACK: Wow. That is awful. This is what I mean…

00:48:30.458 --> 00:48:33.480
MADISON: I definitely feel — I definitely can — like, I don’t want to say, oh,

00:48:33.480 --> 00:48:40.240
I was definitely suicidal, but there were definitely times when I was like,

00:48:40.240 --> 00:48:52.000
is this worth it? I don’t know. I was just very down. It was just really rough. Then getting my

00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:59.520
twin sister involved, there were actual days where I was like, her life would be better without me

00:48:59.520 --> 00:49:10.960
in it. I could definitely see how it’s so easy to get so depressed in a situation like this.

00:49:10.960 --> 00:49:20.280
JACK: So, I feel like there’s a meeting now, right? You, Madison, and Christine are like, okay,

00:49:20.280 --> 00:49:26.420
we know what’s going on. We know who it is. What’s the plan going forward? Am I picturing it right?

00:49:26.420 --> 00:49:34.040
DANA: No, that’s exactly correct. It was a super delicate situation, right, because we’d already

00:49:34.040 --> 00:49:42.120
had very limited success with law enforcement to care, to give a shit about what’s happening,

00:49:42.120 --> 00:49:49.120
but we decided as a group that our only real shot to get some attention here is in numbers,

00:49:49.120 --> 00:49:56.240
right? We know that there’s five-ish other women and girls who are being harassed at the same time.

00:49:56.240 --> 00:50:00.560
They must be going through hell themselves. In order to get any sort of prosecution, he,

00:50:00.560 --> 00:50:06.640
one — we didn’t want him to wipe his hard drives, and two, we didn’t necessarily want him to stop

00:50:06.640 --> 00:50:10.880
immediately and go into a hole. So, we had to be kind of — we wanted to be behind-the-scenes

00:50:10.880 --> 00:50:16.920
on this, but we had to also band the other women together without them tipping him off,

00:50:16.920 --> 00:50:23.380
really. So, that was our next move, was to figure out how to do that.

00:50:23.380 --> 00:50:29.080
CHRISTINE: Yeah, and to tie this back to the post about the back porch; so, his current fiance,

00:50:29.080 --> 00:50:35.200
again, one of the victims, some — occasionally he would post weird things like nudes of himself,

00:50:35.200 --> 00:50:47.040
even, without a face, just different fetishes or desires, and I think in this particular case

00:50:47.040 --> 00:50:52.800
with the back porch — so, his fiance at the time — that’s their shared home — her testimony’s kind of

00:50:52.800 --> 00:50:58.520
important at that instance, of like, hey, confirm this is your back porch. So, we really wanted to

00:50:58.520 --> 00:51:06.080
loop her in, but she’s his current fiance. Can we trust this person? You try to think of how

00:51:06.080 --> 00:51:11.880
you would react in a situation, but not knowing the person on the other end, we don’t personally

00:51:11.880 --> 00:51:16.920
know her. We didn’t know any of these women. So, we didn’t know how they were gonna react

00:51:16.920 --> 00:51:23.000
to any of this. So, we weren’t really quite sure when to — or if we should even loop them in. So,

00:51:23.000 --> 00:51:29.480
ultimately we eventually decided we all need to band together. Individually they’re not — they

00:51:29.480 --> 00:51:37.040
don’t care, but if we can band together, show that this is a bigger issue than just one person

00:51:37.040 --> 00:51:43.520
getting harassed and this is an issue for society as a whole, maybe they’ll take us seriously. So,

00:51:43.520 --> 00:51:47.880
at that point, that’s kind of when we reached out to them on any social media

00:51:47.880 --> 00:51:54.743
platform or contact information that we could find and kind of filled them in at that point.

00:51:54.743 --> 00:52:02.000
MADISON: [MUSIC] Two of the girls had previously caught him as well,

00:52:02.000 --> 00:52:10.000
and this was before we had gotten in communication with the six victims. So,

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.840
one of the girls was one of his ex-girlfriends from college, so she obviously knew where the

00:52:14.840 --> 00:52:21.200
photos came from. She was fairly certain it was him and she felt close enough to

00:52:21.200 --> 00:52:26.680
the father — his name’s John — she felt close enough to reach out to him and be like, hey,

00:52:26.680 --> 00:52:32.000
Chris is doing some really bad things. He’s posting my pictures. There’s thousands of

00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:40.800
posts. He needs to stop. I’m getting the police involved, but can you please help me? He promised

00:52:40.800 --> 00:52:45.760
her that he would talk to him, would get him into counselling, would help him; just please

00:52:45.760 --> 00:52:52.120
don’t press charges. Same thing happened to another victim that was a family friend up

00:52:52.120 --> 00:53:03.200
there. She actually narrowed down that it was him after just how he uses punctuation. He would use

00:53:03.200 --> 00:53:10.200
three dots and a space, which I was like, wow, you thought of that? That’s actually so good.

00:53:10.200 --> 00:53:17.440
She literally narrowed it down by that and then called him out on Facebook Messenger. They,

00:53:17.440 --> 00:53:23.320
and ‘they’ as in Chris and his dad and brother, both named John,

00:53:23.320 --> 00:53:28.800
they convinced her not to press charges if he promised to stop. She says, you have to

00:53:28.800 --> 00:53:34.520
get help. I’ve been a family friend for a very long time. I feel for you. I love you and your

00:53:34.520 --> 00:53:41.440
family. I want you to get help. At this point she didn’t know what the extent of it was to other

00:53:41.440 --> 00:53:50.400
people. She thought she was the only one. So, she felt horrible when we all got ahold of her

00:53:50.400 --> 00:53:58.440
and was telling her what was going on. But — and obviously wanted to be in our group and help. So,

00:53:58.440 --> 00:54:07.880
we actually had all of the confessions of him confessing it and his brother confessing that

00:54:07.880 --> 00:54:12.640
he had known that he does this and will get him help. Fast forward; they never got him

00:54:12.640 --> 00:54:18.620
help. He continued to harass innocent women and children for years and years to come after that.

00:54:18.620 --> 00:54:23.080
JACK: So, they got all the victims together on the same page, six total,

00:54:23.080 --> 00:54:26.840
and they were all really sick and tired from being harassed by this guy. They were

00:54:26.840 --> 00:54:30.420
shocked to find out Christopher was the one behind it, because they all knew him.

00:54:30.420 --> 00:54:36.200
DANA: There were a few other women that we didn’t — never even reached out to that he was…

00:54:36.200 --> 00:54:36.794
CHRISTINE: Yeah, yeah.

00:54:36.794 --> 00:54:39.600
DANA: …efforting nudes of them, too, at the same time,

00:54:39.600 --> 00:54:41.940
but we didn’t even — we had enough at that point.

00:54:41.940 --> 00:54:45.880
JACK: So, Christine created quite a compelling folder of evidence

00:54:45.880 --> 00:54:50.320
for each of the women to take into their own police departments and hand into the police.

00:54:50.320 --> 00:54:57.040
CHRISTINE: I compiled essentially a binder of facts and circumstantial evidence that

00:54:57.040 --> 00:55:01.640
connect — ‘cause again, we don’t have legal evidence at this point, too. This is all kind

00:55:01.640 --> 00:55:07.120
of circumstantial evidence at this point. When we looped in the other girls, we did, again,

00:55:07.120 --> 00:55:14.280
have screenshots of some confessions and things like that, so pretty substantial circumstantial

00:55:14.280 --> 00:55:20.600
evidence, but circumstantial nonetheless. No subpoenas at this point or anything like that. So,

00:55:20.600 --> 00:55:28.480
Dana and Madison and I compile this little Revenge Porn for Dummies, kind of. Knowing our experience

00:55:28.480 --> 00:55:33.280
going into the sheriff’s office, knowing that this is gonna be a fight, let’s be armed with

00:55:33.280 --> 00:55:38.560
the law at least. Let’s be right. Let’s have the laws printed out and referenced in front

00:55:38.560 --> 00:55:47.240
of us. They have to listen to us, right? So, we compiled this little binder. We had background,

00:55:47.240 --> 00:55:53.800
we had each individual victim and a snippet of their backstory, we had any potential law that

00:55:53.800 --> 00:55:59.460
I saw that could potentially be violated from each jurisdiction including federal.

00:55:59.460 --> 00:56:02.800
JACK: Yeah, let’s back up. I want to pause there for a second ‘cause that’s fascinating to me,

00:56:02.800 --> 00:56:06.640
‘cause that’s your wheelhouse. I bet you spent a lot of time doing that.

00:56:06.640 --> 00:56:11.220
Can you just talk about what you think he was doing that was against the law?

00:56:11.220 --> 00:56:17.520
CHRISTINE: Again, I’m a very, very young attorney at this point. Like, first year, right? So,

00:56:17.520 --> 00:56:24.400
I think I’m hot shit, but I don’t really know that much. But I did take internet law and social media

00:56:24.400 --> 00:56:31.080
law and things like that that interested me in law school, and you have that base knowledge at least

00:56:31.080 --> 00:56:37.160
of where to find the law, at least. So, I was familiar with the Florida statute ‘cause again,

00:56:37.160 --> 00:56:42.506
that was just — interested me and I thought it was a move in the right direction.

00:56:42.506 --> 00:56:48.760
JACK: [MUSIC] Okay, so, this Florida statute, enacted in 2015; Section 748049 states that

00:56:48.760 --> 00:56:54.320
the crime of sexual cyber-harassment is committed when a person publishes a sexually-explicit image

00:56:54.320 --> 00:57:00.840
of another person along with personal identifying information of the depicted person to a website

00:57:00.840 --> 00:57:06.800
without the depicted person’s consent for no legitimate purpose and with intent of causing the

00:57:06.800 --> 00:57:13.600
depicted person substantial emotional distress. Boom. Perfect. He definitely violated that one,

00:57:13.600 --> 00:57:17.800
but she did her research. She didn’t want to rely on just one statute. Since he was

00:57:17.800 --> 00:57:22.760
posting nudes of underage girls, he was also violating child pornography statutes. Since he

00:57:22.760 --> 00:57:26.440
was calling people’s bosses and parents and stuff, why not throw in stalking,

00:57:26.440 --> 00:57:30.560
too? Hell, there’s even an aggravating stalking statute which is a felony charge,

00:57:30.560 --> 00:57:35.320
and if he was stalking a minor, that would constitute as aggravated stalking. But

00:57:35.320 --> 00:57:40.840
Christopher was living in New York State, so maybe all these Florida laws don’t even matter. So,

00:57:40.840 --> 00:57:45.000
Christine studied the laws in New York to figure out which ones he violated there.

00:57:45.000 --> 00:57:50.080
She found statutes like sexual performance by a child, extortion, unlawful surveillance,

00:57:50.080 --> 00:57:55.920
dissemination of unlawful surveillance imagery, and stalking. Okay, so, those were the state

00:57:55.920 --> 00:58:00.300
laws that she thinks he violated, but are there any federal laws that she can point to?

00:58:00.300 --> 00:58:07.920
CHRISTINE: There’s no federal law for revenge porn or sexual cyber-harassment or anything like that,

00:58:07.920 --> 00:58:11.740
but there are prohibitions against cyber-stalking and cyber-harassment.

00:58:11.740 --> 00:58:15.880
JACK: Great. Yeah, just keep going. So, you bring this whole body of knowledge

00:58:15.880 --> 00:58:21.640
to them. You slap it down and say, here’s the circumstantial evidence

00:58:21.640 --> 00:58:24.720
that we have on him. Here are the laws that we think he’s breaking…

00:58:24.720 --> 00:58:28.440
DANA: And here’s the guy, here’s the dude that’s doing it. You guys don’t

00:58:28.440 --> 00:58:32.880
even have to go out and find who it is. We already did it. Just please do something.

00:58:32.880 --> 00:58:33.760
CHRISTINE: Yes.

00:58:33.760 --> 00:58:35.760
JACK: Okay, and what’d they say?

00:58:35.760 --> 00:58:42.120
CHRISTINE: So, Dana was actually there with me, too. I march in with my little binder,

00:58:42.120 --> 00:58:47.760
and again, I hope that most people don’t ever have to go report a crime like this,

00:58:47.760 --> 00:58:51.640
but when you go, obviously you don’t want to call 911. You go into the police station.

00:58:51.640 --> 00:58:53.840
JACK: You go in with your lawyer — your best lawyer outfit, too…

00:58:53.840 --> 00:58:58.000
CHRISTINE: Yes. I was probably honestly coming back from work,

00:58:58.000 --> 00:59:01.800
so I already had my lawyer uniform or costume on, you know?

00:59:01.800 --> 00:59:04.840
JACK: Okay, so, you don’t call 911. You go — what do you do?

00:59:04.840 --> 00:59:09.160
CHRISTINE: You go into the — I mean, theoretically you could call the non-emergency line, but you

00:59:09.160 --> 00:59:19.120
go into the police station. There’s a desk with a police officer who is either hopefully new or did

00:59:19.120 --> 00:59:24.920
something really bad to get this position, because you’re just sitting behind a desk, right? You walk

00:59:24.920 --> 00:59:31.560
up and they’re like, bored. They’re just sitting there. You’re like, I’d like to report a crime and

00:59:31.560 --> 00:59:37.080
fill out a police report. Then they depose you. They absolutely depose you. Well, what happened?

00:59:37.080 --> 00:59:41.280
Well, I actually have this whole thing together, so you can just read it if you want. In fact,

00:59:41.280 --> 00:59:45.680
I made a copy. Here; here’s a copy. Flipping through it — hm, this isn’t a crime. How’d

00:59:45.680 --> 00:59:51.640
they get the photos? You hear all of it. I’m like, where are your credentials? Can you just hand this

00:59:51.640 --> 00:59:57.320
off to a detective and let them make the decision on whether this is a crime or not? Not to be rude,

00:59:57.320 --> 01:00:02.200
but I don’t really trust your judgement when your job is to sit behind the desk. They don’t even

01:00:02.200 --> 01:00:08.000
trust you out on the street with a gun, bud. Get this to the real detective, please. So,

01:00:08.000 --> 01:00:16.320
ultimately we were there for over an hour begging them just to let me fill out a police report,

01:00:16.320 --> 01:00:21.280
just to — for the opportunity and privilege to fill out this police report. So, ultimately…

01:00:21.280 --> 01:00:27.025
JACK: So, I imagine that they just say, oh, here’s a form. Fill it out, and then goodbye.

01:00:27.025 --> 01:00:27.040
CHRISTINE: Yes.

01:00:27.040 --> 01:00:30.900
JACK: They’re not gonna do anything. But they wouldn’t even let you fill a form out.

01:00:30.900 --> 01:00:35.800
CHRISTINE: No, and that’s what shocked me, too. I’m like, at least give me the form. So,

01:00:35.800 --> 01:00:39.760
ultimately I demanded that I have the form. So,

01:00:39.760 --> 01:00:44.940
he was just done with talking to me, I’m sure, and gave me the form to fill out.

01:00:44.940 --> 01:00:49.380
JACK: Okay, so, that was your experience. How did the other women do?

01:00:49.380 --> 01:00:54.560
CHRISTINE: Six of us go into police stations scattered all over the country;

01:00:54.560 --> 01:01:03.080
two in New York, one in Central Florida, one in Daytona area, Madison in Melbourne,

01:01:03.080 --> 01:01:10.880
and me in Manatee County, and two of us came back with police reports. Two.

01:01:10.880 --> 01:01:16.320
JACK: [MUSIC] What? Oh, this is so frustrating. Police? Hello,

01:01:16.320 --> 01:01:22.640
police? What are you doing? How are you turning away these women who have brought you every shred

01:01:22.640 --> 01:01:26.960
of evidence to make an arrest and point it to the guy and said, there he is, officer.

01:01:26.960 --> 01:01:35.760
This is an open and shut case, and you’re doing nothing. Come on. I’m so mad right now. Look,

01:01:35.760 --> 01:01:48.040
I gotta — I need a minute. I’m just putting my headphones down. I’m walking away for a minute.

01:01:48.040 --> 01:01:55.680
CHRISTINE: So, it made its way to a detective, and ultimately the detective looked at it and was

01:01:55.680 --> 01:02:01.040
like, yeah, we’re not capable of handling this. I’m gonna send this to the local FBI office. So,

01:02:01.040 --> 01:02:08.280
my Manatee County Sheriff’s Department is the only one out of the six that actually did the

01:02:08.280 --> 01:02:14.880
right thing and moved the file to the proper jurisdiction. If it were anybody else, they might

01:02:14.880 --> 01:02:22.080
even still just be sitting there as local police reports, which is insane to think about, right?

01:02:22.080 --> 01:02:26.700
JACK: Yes. Yeah, there’s so many levels of frustration here.

01:02:26.700 --> 01:02:29.720
CHRISTINE: Yes. And shout out to the FBI,

01:02:29.720 --> 01:02:32.580
‘cause they are amazing once you can actually get to them.

01:02:32.580 --> 01:02:38.400
JACK: Yes. So, the FBI are like, wow, this is — a lot of work is done here, but this is

01:02:38.400 --> 01:02:44.480
circumstantial evidence. We’re going to get direct evidence. So, they start subpoenaing…

01:02:44.480 --> 01:02:45.960
CHRISTINE: So…

01:02:45.960 --> 01:02:47.320
JACK: …e-mails and stuff, right?

01:02:47.320 --> 01:02:54.960
CHRISTINE: No. So, okay, that’s the interesting part of — as a — it’s a legal nerd interesting

01:02:54.960 --> 01:02:58.695
part. I’m sure you all have different parts that you find more fascinating than others.

01:02:58.695 --> 01:02:59.420
JACK: Let’s get nerdy. I love it.

01:02:59.420 --> 01:03:04.560
CHRISTINE: But that’s what’s so frustrating about the lack of police intervention and

01:03:04.560 --> 01:03:08.360
law enforcement intervention, is when you’re in law enforcement,

01:03:08.360 --> 01:03:11.760
you have the inherent authority, really, with probable cause to pull subpoenas.

01:03:11.760 --> 01:03:15.960
JACK: So, let’s back up a second. They finally get the police to open this police report,

01:03:15.960 --> 01:03:20.280
but this whole time, they were trying to collect as much evidence as they could on this guy. Now,

01:03:20.280 --> 01:03:25.760
one thing the police can do is send a subpoena to 4chan or Kik or any of these websites and say,

01:03:25.760 --> 01:03:29.880
hey, we want the information on this user, and those sites have to comply with US law if they’re

01:03:29.880 --> 01:03:35.440
based in the US. So, they would give the police this user’s data without a fuss. But if Christine

01:03:35.440 --> 01:03:39.920
wants information on a user, these sites are not gonna give it to her. She doesn’t have

01:03:39.920 --> 01:03:46.141
the subpoena power that the police have. However, she’s got a trick up her sleeve to get that power.

01:03:46.141 --> 01:03:50.640
CHRISTINE: [MUSIC] I can file a lawsuit and then open discovery and then have the

01:03:50.640 --> 01:03:57.520
subpoena power to get subpoenas from different people or entities and things like that. So,

01:03:57.520 --> 01:04:01.180
what Madison and I ended up having to do is file a lawsuit.

01:04:01.180 --> 01:04:05.320
JACK: This was a civil lawsuit which they actually opened up before they even knew it

01:04:05.320 --> 01:04:10.080
was Christopher. They were so frustrated that the police weren’t helping them and they were like,

01:04:10.080 --> 01:04:14.960
fine, we’ll get the subpoena power ourselves. It’s gonna take some extra money and time, but they had

01:04:14.960 --> 01:04:19.720
to do something about this guy. Now, here’s the problem; they didn’t know his name when filing

01:04:19.720 --> 01:04:24.360
the civil suit, so they just filed it against John Doe. Basically, they were going to use the courts

01:04:24.360 --> 01:04:30.200
to be able to issue subpoenas to identify their harasser. But there’s another problem; as soon

01:04:30.200 --> 01:04:34.560
as the subpoena comes through, the site will likely inform Christopher that there’s a case

01:04:34.560 --> 01:04:40.040
against him and he’ll get to see who’s filing it. So, the sisters didn’t want to put their names as

01:04:40.040 --> 01:04:45.960
the victims of the case and instead wanted to file it anonymously, which I think should

01:04:45.960 --> 01:04:51.740
also be fine since they’re the victims. Courts should protect victims in cases like this, right?

01:04:51.740 --> 01:05:00.320
CHRISTINE: The court declined our request to do that, so we had the decision at that time

01:05:00.320 --> 01:05:07.640
on whether or not we wanted to drop it or refile the complaint with our legal names in there and

01:05:07.640 --> 01:05:13.480
just knowing that that was gonna be on the Google forever if you Google our names. You

01:05:13.480 --> 01:05:20.800
can go in and look at all the fun drama of the case because it’s — the docket’s there,

01:05:20.800 --> 01:05:24.400
whereas the other victims in the case are protected. In the criminal case,

01:05:24.400 --> 01:05:29.800
you’ll notice it’s everyone’s initials and that’s to protect victims of a crime.

01:05:29.800 --> 01:05:31.480
JACK: That’s another whole level of frustration,

01:05:31.480 --> 01:05:37.560
is that they would — they denied you to be anonymous — or just initials of the lawsuit,

01:05:37.560 --> 01:05:41.060
because, yeah, that opens you up to all kinds of other problems.

01:05:41.060 --> 01:05:42.514
CHRISTINE: Correct. So…

01:05:42.514 --> 01:05:44.700
JACK: Especially when you’re the victim. Oh, gosh.

01:05:44.700 --> 01:05:50.280
CHRISTINE: Yeah, but — and again, through the civil process, you’re treated almost like you’re

01:05:50.280 --> 01:05:57.640
a gold digger looking for money or something. Like, every —opposing council, the magistrate,

01:05:57.640 --> 01:06:05.480
judges, everyone is acting like this is the most ridiculous case and that the — it was

01:06:05.480 --> 01:06:14.200
just very frustrating and it was just very eye-opening on, again, being a young lawyer

01:06:14.200 --> 01:06:24.000
and just seeing it from the other side on how the system really is not set up to help you at all.

01:06:24.000 --> 01:06:30.760
JACK: [MUSIC] By this point, Christopher was well aware of what was going on. He knew they

01:06:30.760 --> 01:06:35.920
all knew it was him, and they were talking about it, too. I think his dad was telling everyone,

01:06:35.920 --> 01:06:38.960
okay, let’s all calm down. I’ll talk to Christopher and get him to stop.

01:06:38.960 --> 01:06:44.720
I’m sorry. But promise after promise was broken. He wasn’t stopping. He kept at it.

01:06:44.720 --> 01:06:49.480
He even apologized and admitted to it a few times, but then kept doing it. He somehow

01:06:49.480 --> 01:06:55.360
was addicted to harassing these women. Even with lawsuits, even with criminal cases open,

01:06:55.360 --> 01:07:01.240
he just wouldn’t stop. Luckily they were able to get the FBI’s attention on this.

01:07:01.240 --> 01:07:07.640
DANA: So, I do want to stress that the minor, the fourteen-year-old,

01:07:07.640 --> 01:07:14.560
is so incredibly important to the story. I’m not sure — obviously the

01:07:14.560 --> 01:07:19.040
Manatee County Sheriff’s Office did the right thing by forwarding it to

01:07:19.040 --> 01:07:24.600
the FBI. I don’t think anybody would have given a shit if the minor wasn’t involved.

01:07:24.600 --> 01:07:26.780
MADISON: Yeah, that’s part of it for sure.

01:07:26.780 --> 01:07:31.600
DANA: Everything — obviously all these women went through some horrible things. I mean,

01:07:31.600 --> 01:07:36.520
his ex from college tried to commit suicide multiple times over this. That’s horrible. He

01:07:36.520 --> 01:07:42.240
was photographing his fiance in their private home and then posting it on the internet to get off to

01:07:42.240 --> 01:07:48.120
it. This is awful, right? And what they did to my wife and my sister-in-law who hadn’t — who

01:07:48.120 --> 01:07:52.880
were just out minding their own business and had nothing to do with this guy is horrible. But I

01:07:52.880 --> 01:07:59.640
don’t think anybody ultimately would have given a shit, really, if this girl was not involved. The

01:07:59.640 --> 01:08:06.920
posts were abhorrent. He was basically trying to hire someone on 4chan to rape her and video

01:08:06.920 --> 01:08:13.360
it and then send it to him, and I think that’s what ultimately got the attention to the case.

01:08:13.360 --> 01:08:17.360
JACK: Yikes. What a mess at every turn. So,

01:08:17.360 --> 01:08:22.100
thank goodness the FBI was looking into this. We’ve got a monster on the loose. Go get him.

01:08:22.100 --> 01:08:29.080
MADISON: Yeah, so, they basically had to recreate all of our subpoenas that my

01:08:29.080 --> 01:08:35.880
sister and I had done. So, on the civil side we were sending out subpoenas on our behalf,

01:08:35.880 --> 01:08:43.240
on the civil side, so that’s how we had all of the information to bring to the police stations. So,

01:08:43.240 --> 01:08:48.640
they — we obviously gave them that information, but from an investigative standpoint,

01:08:48.640 --> 01:08:54.920
they still have to recreate them. But it had pretty much already been done,

01:08:54.920 --> 01:09:01.920
so it was a good start for them. They don’t tell victims much, so I don’t know if they

01:09:01.920 --> 01:09:07.600
found more in their search, but they definitely recreated our subpoenas to

01:09:07.600 --> 01:09:14.240
the different IPs and IP addresses, and then eventually got to make an arrest.

01:09:14.240 --> 01:09:19.880
JACK: Arrested. [CLAPPING] Thank goodness. I don’t think I can handle anymore problems. Actually,

01:09:19.880 --> 01:09:31.640
the arrest was a non-event. It was more like that he went down to the police station himself to talk

01:09:31.640 --> 01:09:36.280
to them and they processed him, and he went back home. But at least the perp is recognized and

01:09:36.280 --> 01:09:41.040
identified and the court dates were set. Listening to these sisters, I don’t think there was any way

01:09:41.040 --> 01:09:46.960
for him to stop on his own. He was just too far gone into it. But what’s amazing is these two

01:09:46.960 --> 01:09:52.320
sisters, they were relentless about fighting back, and because Christine was a lawyer, she knew what

01:09:52.320 --> 01:09:57.480
avenues you could go down and what laws to wield in order to fight this. The average person isn’t

01:09:57.480 --> 01:10:01.920
gonna know that you can use a civil lawsuit in order to get courts to issue subpoenas for you,

01:10:01.920 --> 01:10:06.320
and then use that information to open a criminal case at the same time. The fact that they didn’t

01:10:06.320 --> 01:10:10.830
want to just try to open one case, but to have six different women all get cases open at the

01:10:10.830 --> 01:10:18.480
same time on this guy? It’s just brilliant work by them. What’s the saying that they like saying?

01:10:18.480 --> 01:10:22.120
CHRISTINE: We’ll solve any crime by dinnertime. Dinnertime just happened

01:10:22.120 --> 01:10:23.960
to be ten years later, so we would have starved to death.

01:10:23.960 --> 01:10:27.150
DANA: Yeah, this took over ten years of trying to…

01:10:27.150 --> 01:10:32.160
JACK: Ten years? Who in the world has the energy and drive to continue harassing the

01:10:32.160 --> 01:10:38.400
same women for ten solid years? Apparently this guy, Christopher, did. [MUSIC] So,

01:10:38.400 --> 01:10:44.640
what happens to him? Well, he was arrested, right? Clearly there was a ton of evidence of his crimes,

01:10:44.640 --> 01:10:50.280
including him admitting to his victims and promising to stop. So, when he goes to court,

01:10:50.280 --> 01:10:55.680
there’s no other option for him to plead guilty, which means no trial was needed. Skip all that

01:10:55.680 --> 01:11:01.320
since he’s admitting to it. But there’s still the court proceeding to figure out his punishment,

01:11:01.320 --> 01:11:06.920
a sentencing hearing. Clearly this man has caused great harm to these women,

01:11:06.920 --> 01:11:13.620
but can the women influence what the judge decides the sentence should be? Hell yeah they can.

01:11:13.620 --> 01:11:17.520
CHRISTINE: He fucked with the wrong ladies.

01:11:17.520 --> 01:11:22.600
JACK: Christine wanted all the victims to march into the courtroom during the

01:11:22.600 --> 01:11:28.120
sentencing hearing and voice themselves to let the judge know how much he hurt them,

01:11:28.120 --> 01:11:33.000
because it’s going to be up to the judge to decide the sentence, and this is their only

01:11:33.000 --> 01:11:38.760
chance to make their voices heard. Before the court case, when was the last time you saw him?

01:11:38.760 --> 01:11:41.200
CHRISTINE: Oh, god. Like, my wedding.

01:11:41.200 --> 01:11:42.280
JACK: Okay.

01:11:42.280 --> 01:11:43.720
CHRISTINE: Yeah.

01:11:43.720 --> 01:11:46.560
JACK: So, then when you see him in the court — ‘cause you walk in there,

01:11:46.560 --> 01:11:51.000
you see his face. Do you have a feeling?

01:11:51.000 --> 01:11:55.600
CHRISTINE: I really don’t think I did, and if I did I blocked it out, because I think it

01:11:55.600 --> 01:12:04.640
had been so much time that if anything, I was just like, oh, he looks like shit. You know?

01:12:04.640 --> 01:12:08.980
JACK: [LAUGHS] Yeah. I think that’s just…

01:12:08.980 --> 01:12:19.720
CHRISTINE: I said — I think my exact words were, oh, they’re not starving him. He was very greasy.

01:12:19.720 --> 01:12:27.240
MADISON: It was just — it was a weird feeling. It’s terrifying in a sense ‘cause you’re seeing

01:12:27.240 --> 01:12:35.280
this person in real life. His family is there in real life. You know you’re gonna

01:12:35.280 --> 01:12:43.840
have to go up and talk to the judge and give your case in real life, not knowing what the

01:12:43.840 --> 01:12:49.960
judge might think of the situation or even if he understands the situation in total,

01:12:49.960 --> 01:13:01.040
you know? It’s a very new crime, so there’s not a lot of examples of these kind of cases to go

01:13:01.040 --> 01:13:09.200
forward. It’s just scary all around. You’re — have random other people you don’t even know having to

01:13:09.200 --> 01:13:16.960
listen to your victim impact speech. It’s just — terrifying is the only word I can think of.

01:13:16.960 --> 01:13:21.740
JACK: Was the judge — was there any stupid questions the judge asked that you remember?

01:13:21.740 --> 01:13:26.720
MADISON: Oh my gosh, so, the judge was asking so many questions,

01:13:26.720 --> 01:13:35.800
and it was so scary because they almost sounded kind of victim-shamey at first, and I was like,

01:13:35.800 --> 01:13:42.960
oh my gosh, is he gonna — is this it? Is this the kind of judge that’s gonna be like, well,

01:13:42.960 --> 01:13:50.520
no, this is all your fault? I literally had it in my mind. I remember being a little defensive at

01:13:50.520 --> 01:13:57.480
some of his questions because he was interrupting my victim impact statement, which — it was very

01:13:57.480 --> 01:14:01.920
long, but he was interrupting as he thought of questions. So I was like, he’s not even letting

01:14:01.920 --> 01:14:08.760
me finish and he’s just blurting out questions as I’m reading this victim impact statement.

01:14:08.760 --> 01:14:19.280
It was so terrifying. Then he ended up really just being so confused at the whole situation,

01:14:19.280 --> 01:14:25.760
on why he’s doing this, and he was actually just really upset about everything that he had done,

01:14:25.760 --> 01:14:35.360
but he showed it by asking a lot of questions and it was so nerve-wracking. In court,

01:14:35.360 --> 01:14:38.160
the judge was like, what’s a nip slip? I was like, it’s exactly what it sounds

01:14:38.160 --> 01:14:43.514
like. Your nipple pops out of the shirt or whatever you’re wearing [LAUGHS].

01:14:43.514 --> 01:14:46.760
JACK: The victims gave their impact statement. It was fucking good.

01:14:46.760 --> 01:14:49.800
Christopher was realizing shit’s not going well for him at all.

01:14:49.800 --> 01:14:55.040
CHRISTINE: He’s allowed to talk after all of us, and so, we had the whole dramatic him turning to

01:14:55.040 --> 01:15:02.760
us and apologizing to Dana first, by the way, so that was funny. But he turns to us and the crowd,

01:15:02.760 --> 01:15:07.360
and the United States attorney and the FBI agents are kinda standing in-between us, like,

01:15:07.360 --> 01:15:11.240
do not come closer. Like, I’m gonna dropkick you, kinda thing. And the,

01:15:11.240 --> 01:15:15.280
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’, the dramatic effect and all of that.

01:15:15.280 --> 01:15:19.240
JACK: The judge said the range for sentencing is three to six years

01:15:19.240 --> 01:15:22.840
for cases like this. The defense attorney was arguing to give him the lower end of

01:15:22.840 --> 01:15:25.880
that. The prosecuting attorney was arguing, give him the higher end.

01:15:25.880 --> 01:15:28.840
DANA: I think I remember us all talking in the hallway and being like, dude,

01:15:28.840 --> 01:15:31.360
if he gets five years, we’d be over the moon.

01:15:31.360 --> 01:15:36.160
JACK: Because the victim impact statements took so long, they had to come back a second

01:15:36.160 --> 01:15:39.840
day just to hear the sentence. [MUSIC] So, the next day they all come back into the

01:15:39.840 --> 01:15:43.280
courtroom. They sit down. They ask Christopher to stand up while the

01:15:43.280 --> 01:15:50.680
judge reads the sentence to him. The judge sentenced him to fifteen years in prison.

01:15:50.680 --> 01:15:54.388
MADISON: It was — we all just — it was me, my sister, Dana, one of our friends had come to

01:15:54.388 --> 01:15:56.040
support us, and my boyfriend, now fiance, Bryce. We were in there and I literally

01:15:56.040 --> 01:16:03.880
just breathed heavy and grabbed my fiance’s hand and I was like, oh my gosh, we did it.

01:16:03.880 --> 01:16:06.180
CHRISTINE: Oh yeah, it was super dramatic.

01:16:06.180 --> 01:16:11.280
JACK: Dana, did you cry when they announced the sentence?

01:16:11.280 --> 01:16:19.320
DANA: I did, yeah. I think we all had our own range of emotions, but I certainly did. There

01:16:19.320 --> 01:16:23.840
was a lot going on there, you know? This was a person that I’ve known for almost two decades

01:16:23.840 --> 01:16:28.360
and cared for at one point, and then it was also a person who inflicted some of the worst emotional

01:16:28.360 --> 01:16:36.680
harm upon my family they could even imagine. So, that coupled with how long and hard — and

01:16:36.680 --> 01:16:43.440
the nights we stayed up ‘til 4:00 in the morning trying to compile all these things and put this

01:16:43.440 --> 01:16:49.560
case together and to get law enforcement to care, for it all — to see somebody that you once cared

01:16:49.560 --> 01:17:01.520
about essentially have their lives ended in the same moment that a case that you’ve put so much

01:17:01.520 --> 01:17:06.000
effort towards, to get somebody to care, to end that person’s life all happening at the

01:17:06.000 --> 01:17:13.680
same moment was unbelievable. I did — I didn’t think I would react that way, but I did. I was…

01:17:13.680 --> 01:17:16.760
CHRISTINE: Yeah, I don’t think I remember you crying. I’m sure you did. I remember Madison

01:17:16.760 --> 01:17:20.040
crying. I remember Madison crying during her victim impact statement,

01:17:20.040 --> 01:17:26.400
too. I think I compartmentalized myself to be in lawyer mode, so I don’t think I got

01:17:26.400 --> 01:17:31.172
emotional at all. I was just kinda stone cold face, but I was definitely excited.

01:17:31.172 --> 01:17:33.069
DANA: You’re just staring at his eyes, like, mm-hm, mm-hm.

01:17:33.069 --> 01:17:36.960
CHRISTINE: Yeah, I was just staring at him even when he was doing his whole thing. But yeah,

01:17:36.960 --> 01:17:45.880
I think — I definitely remember feeling excited, like, wow, this judge listened to us and was

01:17:45.880 --> 01:17:51.480
in utter shock and disbelief of how bad this was, and I think it was just that validation,

01:17:51.480 --> 01:17:59.960
even. Like Dana was saying, there’s so much sweat and tears that go into this from all

01:17:59.960 --> 01:18:06.560
aspects of it that it was just validating more than anything, that, wow, if put in the correct

01:18:06.560 --> 01:18:14.860
venue, this — you can make a difference and they care. We made a difference, you know?

01:18:14.860 --> 01:18:21.400
JACK: Now, even though the sentencing range was three to six years, it’s at the discretion of the

01:18:21.400 --> 01:18:26.200
judge to assign the sentence, and he apparently was so moved by the victims that he basically

01:18:26.200 --> 01:18:33.200
tripled the high end of the range and gave him fifteen years. Incredible. Fifteen years in prison

01:18:33.200 --> 01:18:41.240
for cyber-harassment. Whoa, that’s quite a bit, actually, isn’t it? Is that too much? Hold on,

01:18:41.240 --> 01:18:49.000
he spent ten years harassing Madison, making her life hell. That’s a long time for someone

01:18:49.000 --> 01:18:57.760
to suffer, and that’s just one person. Well, what an ending, huh? The victims won one,

01:18:57.760 --> 01:19:07.920
finally. But sorry, that’s not the end. The defense attorney found a problem in the ruling;

01:19:07.920 --> 01:19:12.960
some procedural error in the case. [MUSIC] I think it had something to do with the sentencing range.

01:19:12.960 --> 01:19:17.800
They were saying the initial range was calculated incorrectly, which may have influenced the judge’s

01:19:17.800 --> 01:19:24.760
decision on what to sentence him. This meant the case was reopened and it meant a new judge had to

01:19:24.760 --> 01:19:31.080
come in and take a look at this case and issue a new sentence. So, just when they thought that

01:19:31.080 --> 01:19:36.920
they had this wrapped up and the healing process could begin, the sisters and other victims were

01:19:36.920 --> 01:19:44.140
sucked back into the case. Scabs were ripped off again. The pain and fear was felt all over again.

01:19:44.140 --> 01:19:49.640
CHRISTINE: Yes. So, at this point — again, probably a character flaw, but we’re just like,

01:19:49.640 --> 01:19:54.200
this is funny at this point. At least that’s how I’m feeling. I’m like, this is terrible, but you

01:19:54.200 --> 01:20:04.280
gotta laugh, right? Like, what are the odds? So, yeah, we had to go back and do a sentencing. At

01:20:04.280 --> 01:20:13.280
this point I’m pregnant, so, we were hoping it wasn’t in an inconvenient time, but ultimately

01:20:13.280 --> 01:20:18.580
we had to go back almost a year later, I believe. Dana, do you think that sounds right?

01:20:18.580 --> 01:20:27.760
DANA: Yeah. It was just a touch over a year. For sure, Jack, Christine’s a badass, but for me,

01:20:27.760 --> 01:20:31.960
personally, I see this happen and I’m like, oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. This is how he gets

01:20:31.960 --> 01:20:39.960
off. This is how he gets off. We had the one judge who gave a shit and the guy who took all

01:20:39.960 --> 01:20:44.120
these factors into account and understood what really happened here and nailed him with the

01:20:44.120 --> 01:20:49.640
sentence that he actually deserved, and now we’re kicked back to another judge who’s maybe not gonna

01:20:49.640 --> 01:20:52.920
quite understand what actually happened here, ‘cause they’re all a million years old. None of

01:20:52.920 --> 01:20:58.800
them — the last time they were on the internet was AOL. They don’t understand what this is.

01:20:58.800 --> 01:21:02.720
MADISON: It was so frustrating.

01:21:02.720 --> 01:21:09.680
JACK: All the victims had to travel all the way back to court and relive their traumas

01:21:09.680 --> 01:21:16.320
by reading their victim impact statements again. More crying. More emotions. Hell,

01:21:16.320 --> 01:21:21.313
I’d even say this retrial is re-victimizing the victims.

01:21:21.313 --> 01:21:22.680
CHRISTINE:

01:21:22.680 --> 01:21:33.920
So, luckily, the judge did agree with the original judge’s decision that it was a horrible crime,

01:21:33.920 --> 01:21:42.440
that he did not learn his lesson. The only reason he wanted to show remorse was once he got caught,

01:21:42.440 --> 01:21:52.360
and the judge saw right through him and gave him the same exact amount of time, fifteen years.

01:21:52.360 --> 01:21:55.840
JACK: [MUSIC] Of course they were on edge waiting for a decision like this to be announced in the

01:21:55.840 --> 01:22:02.320
courtroom. So, when it’s spoken, it results in another emotional moment for the victims,

01:22:02.320 --> 01:22:10.080
more crying. Okay, so, they won the criminal case against him again, but there was that civil

01:22:10.080 --> 01:22:14.840
lawsuit they had against him, too, remember? Well, when Christopher saw that he was likely going to

01:22:14.840 --> 01:22:21.960
lose that civil lawsuit, he filed for bankruptcy to avoid having to pay any fines or restitution

01:22:21.960 --> 01:22:27.400
that would be part of that suit. The sisters won that case, but since he had filed for bankruptcy,

01:22:27.400 --> 01:22:31.520
they didn’t get any money, which really wasn’t the point. The point of that case was just to

01:22:31.520 --> 01:22:37.080
give them the ability to gather evidence and to figure out who was behind this. But still,

01:22:37.080 --> 01:22:42.480
all this actually came to a big financial cost to the sisters. There were expensive lawyer

01:22:42.480 --> 01:22:47.240
fees. They had to travel to court to give victim impact statements. There were costs associated

01:22:47.240 --> 01:22:52.880
to getting subpoenas and opening a civil suit, and that’s just the legal cost. How much time did they

01:22:52.880 --> 01:22:59.600
spend investigating this? Doesn’t that add up to something? Of course, how much pain and suffering

01:22:59.600 --> 01:23:05.960
was caused. This was traumatic. So, they mentioned all this in the criminal case and told the judge

01:23:05.960 --> 01:23:11.720
during the sentencing, hey man, this has been draining to us emotionally, but also our money.

01:23:11.720 --> 01:23:17.660
So, when the judge sentenced him to fifteen years, he also took all these costs into consideration.

01:23:17.660 --> 01:23:24.240
MADISON: He had the fifteen years and then he also owes my sister and I money

01:23:24.240 --> 01:23:29.280
for our damages. We’re probably never gonna see a dime of that in our lives,

01:23:29.280 --> 01:23:34.820
but it was a nice add-on that they understood our struggles, you know?

01:23:34.820 --> 01:23:37.720
JACK: I think that brings us to the end.

01:23:37.720 --> 01:23:46.057
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Happy ending. [LAUGHS]

01:23:46.057 --> 01:23:46.071
JACK: [LAUGHS]

01:23:46.071 --> 01:23:53.080
MADISON: Yeah, it was really emotional. The last sentence in my victim impact speech kinda

01:23:53.080 --> 01:24:02.880
summarized it, and it was ‘the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.’ That quote just gets me

01:24:02.880 --> 01:24:11.160
every time because I don’t think I personally could have won or survived without any of the

01:24:11.160 --> 01:24:20.040
other girls. We’re constantly gonna have almost this sisterhood of — like a pack of

01:24:20.040 --> 01:24:40.457
wolves. [LAUGHS] We didn’t even know each other. Most of us didn’t know each other before this.

01:24:40.457 --> 01:24:43.720
(OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank-you to Madison, Christine, and Dana for coming on the show and

01:24:43.720 --> 01:24:48.880
sharing this emotional roller-coaster of a story with us. It’s so inspirational. When nobody would

01:24:48.880 --> 01:24:53.600
help them, they became their own advocate and fought back. I love that. They fought cleanly,

01:24:53.600 --> 01:24:58.200
too. That’s the thing that gets me about this story. They didn’t harass him back or do any

01:24:58.200 --> 01:25:03.400
of the things that he did to them. Instead, they trudged through the legal system to get

01:25:03.400 --> 01:25:09.560
justice. Amazing. I mentioned earlier I did an episode about Kik. That’s Episode

01:25:09.560 --> 01:25:15.840
93 if you want to listen to it. If you thought this episode was awful, that one is worse. So,

01:25:15.840 --> 01:25:21.680
yeah, actually, just skip that episode altogether. This episode was created by me, the faded raider,

01:25:21.680 --> 01:25:26.960
Jack Rhysider, sound design by the resurrected suspect, Andrew Meriwether, and this episode was

01:25:26.960 --> 01:25:31.840
assembled by the slinky drink, Tristan Ledger, mixing by Proximity Sound, and our theme music

01:25:31.840 --> 01:25:52.280
is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. My new year’s resolution is 4K. This is Darknet Diaries.