A Texas woman has been awarded $1.2 billion in a revenge porn case after her ex-boyfriend shared her explicit photos online without her consent.
The news comes a year after the victim, Known as D.L. in the suit, filed a harassment lawsuit in April 2022 against her ex-boyfriend, Marques Jamal Jackson. He was accused of accessing her computer and posting her intimate photos online.
“This type of experience is devastating,” the woman said, according to CBS News. “It’s extremely painful. It’s hurtful. It’s embarrassing, and you fear that either something will trigger and it will start again or that the previous effort inspired someone new, and then they might start.”
After their four-year relationship ended in 2020, the woman alleges that Jackson launched a campaign to ruin her life. She claims he shared her photos on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, and even Pornhub while emailing links to her friends and family and tagging her employers in the posts.
“You will spend the rest of your life trying and failing to wipe yourself off the internet,” Jackson wrote in one of his final messages to her. “Everyone you ever meet will hear the story and go looking.”
According to the CBS News, Jackson also allegedly hacked into the woman’s mother’s home security system to spy on D.L. after being told his access was revoked following the breakup. He was also accused of using D.L.’s bank account to pay his rent and other bills.
Yet, it’s doubtful the victim will collect the total sum assigned by the jury, encompassing $200 million for past and future emotional distress, coupled with an additional $1 billion in punitive damages.
Jacob Schiffer, one of D.L.’s legal representatives, emphasized that the jury’s verdict should deter individuals from contemplating using revenge porn to retaliate against former partners.
“For the future, anyone thinking of wanting to do this to somebody else, that is going to weigh on them like a ball and chain until the date that they’re buried,” he said.
Another lawyer for D.L., Brad Gilde, said: “The communication from the jury is that you make it your mission to ruin someone emotionally for the rest of your life, then you are going to be facing a judgment that’s going to ruin you financially for the rest of your life.”
