LOS ANGELES – The trouble one can get into by violating California’s “revenge porn” law is no longer hypothetical.
Following a week-long trial, Noe Iniguez of Los Angeles was found guilty of violating restraining orders issued by the court, as well as §48.95 of the California penal code, a recently added section more commonly referred to as the revenge porn law.
According to prosecutors, Iniguez used an assumed name to post derogatory comments about his ex-girlfriend to the Facebook page of her employer and later posted nude photographs of her to the same page, referring to her as a “drunk” and a “slut” in comments published along with the pictures. The restraining orders at issue in the case were granted to Iniguez’s ex-girlfriend in November 2011, after Iniguez began sending her harassing text messages.
Judge David Fields sentenced Iniguez to a year in jail to be followed by a 36-month probation period. Iniguez also will be required to attend domestic violence counseling, and to honor the court’s ongoing order to stay away from his ex-girlfriend.
City Attorney Mike Feuer said the conviction “sends a strong message that this type of malicious behavior will not be tolerated,” adding that the law is a “valuable tool” for prosecutors seeking to protect those “whose lives and reputations have been upended by a person they once trusted.”
While there has been some concern expressed by critics of California’s revenge porn law the statute might be difficult to enforce due to an exception for “selfies” and the challenge of meeting the statute’s requirement of proving intent to cause emotional distress, Iniguez’s harassing conduct left little doubt as to his intent.
Another major revenge porn case is gearing up in California, this one involving Casey Meyering of Tulsa, OK, the alleged webmaster of the revenge porn site WinByState.
According to prosecutors, the site encouraged a kind of competition among users to post the most humiliating pictures of their ex-girlfriends (or current girlfriends). After posting the images, prosecutors say Meyering required the revenge porn victims to pay $250 via a Google Wallet account to have the images removed from the site.
“This behavior is the very definition of predatory, and this website made a game out of humiliating victims for profit,” California Attorney General Kamala Harris said when announcing the charges against Meyering in February.
Beyond California, 12 other U.S. states have established revenge porn laws; legislation is pending in at least 15 others.
