Stories about employees who lose their jobs after sexual pictures of them come to light are tabloid favorites. In the last few weeks, we’ve heard about a tri-state area nurse and an Indiana schoolteacher who were fired by employers after their OnlyFans accounts came to light.
It’s an even bigger story when it happens to a public personality, like Erick Adame, a New York City weatherman who was sacked last week by Spectrum News after an unknown viewer sent Adame’s secret adult livestream to his boss and his mom. Adame has apologized for what he called a “lapse in judgment”, but has also enjoyed an outpouring of support from fans, some of whom have supported a petition to reinstate Adame, arguing that no employer should punish employees for their private and consensual sex lives.
But lawyers say there may be powerful legal remedies for Adame, as well as anyone finding themselves the target of revenge porn.
Attorney Annie Seifullah is not representing Adame, but understands the stakes as a survivor herself. In 2014, she was fired from her job as a New York City public school principal after an abusive ex-boyfriend sent stolen intimate photos of her to the New York Post, which published them along with false claims that she was a sexual predator.
While fighting the accusations, she enrolled in law school, and after settling with the state department of education for an undisclosed amount, now represents victims of revenge porn as an associate at CA Goldberg. In many US states including New York, revenge porn laws are stronger today than they were just a few years ago. That’s why Seifullah wants people to know: “There’s lots you can do to fight back.”
Erick Adame’s story is unusual in that he appears so far to have been targeted by an unknown person for an unknown reason. “But it’s far more common for it to be very obvious who the person is who’s causing the harm,” Seifullah said. “And it’s very, very typically an abusive, controlling, obsessive ex-partner who wants to use it to harm the person: to humiliate them or to use that kind of threat as leverage for custody or alimony reasons.”
Nearly all 50 states now have laws that outlaw nonconsensual pornography, or revenge porn. Most states make it a criminal offense to disseminate intimate images of someone if the defendant acted with intent to harm. In New York City, a law passed in 2017 goes even further, making it a crime to even threaten to send revenge porn. Victims can also go to family court and get a civil restraining order directing offenders to destroy the victims’ intimate images in their possession, or face arrest if they continue to distribute them. “That’s a really good tool for a lot of our clients, because they can do it privately without having to get someone arrested,” Seifullah said.
Seifullah said her firm’s clients have included people like teachers and physicians whose exes have threatened to distribute their nudes to their employers: “And in those cases, every single time when that’s happened in New York, we’ve been able to save the person’s job.” Often, that means educating the victim’s employer about relevant laws. “Generally, employers want to do the right thing; they don’t want to terminate someone for something that’s clearly an act of violence against them.”
In the last decade, a handful of states including New York, Pennsylvania and Washington have also passed laws allowing victims to bring a civil suit against anyone who distributes revenge porn with intent to harm. In a case like Adame’s, that might also require filing a suit to obtain the identity of an unknown perpetrator. “It’s essentially just a civil subpoena to the internet service provider, or the tech platform, to give us all the subscriber information for the person who’s behind that anonymous account,” Seifullah said. “It’s a cumbersome process, but if you’re determined, you might be able to get an actual identity for a party you can sue for damages.”
But if your photos have leaked to the tabloids, and the tabloids have redacted the images substantively, those photos may never go away, she said. “If you own the copyright to the photo, there are ways we can leverage copyright laws to do DMCA takedowns to get some images removed – but you know, once it’s on the internet, it’s there kind of forever. And so sometimes we work with our clients to figure out the best place for them to put their time and resources.”
In addition to stronger laws, Seifullah says she’s observed a shift in public sentiment around sharing sexual imagery online – especially since the pandemic, when so many people’s intimate lives were forced to go digital. There’s also an increased understanding that many people are turning to online sex work out of economic necessity. “Part of the reason why people are doing this is because they can’t live off of the salaries that are being paid,” Seifullah said. “It’s a larger question of, how do we make money? How do we live? How do we have the freedom to do what we need, to be who we are?”
These are questions she hopes people discuss more openly. “Because I promise you, there are so many people who are watching what’s happening to Erick, and they’re just like, ‘Oh, shit, I hope my cam stuff doesn’t come out someday.’ Because it’s just so much more common that people know, or realize, or want to talk about.”
