Revenge Porn Victim Sought $100M, Got $1.2B

A Texas jury has awarded $1.2 billion to a woman who said she was a revenge porn victim at the hands of a former beau. The woman's complaint, filed in April of last year in Harris County, accused ex-boyfriend Marquez Jackson of posting "visual intimate material" of her—willingly shared with him while they were dating—online after their split, per CBS News. The lawsuit notes the couple started dating in 2016, but that things got rocky by early 2020. The two officially broke up in October 2021, per the complaint, but soon after is when Jackson began his harassment campaign, according to the woman, who's identified only by the initials "DL" in the suit.

The complaint claims that Jackson uploaded those intimate photos on adult websites and social media, "with the intent to embarrass, harass, torment, humiliate, and publicly shame" DL. "You will spend the rest of your life trying and failing to wipe yourself off the internet," Jackson told DL in March 2022, she says in the suit. "Everyone you ever meet will hear the story and go looking ... Happy hunting." The complaint also alleges that Jackson hacked into DL's work computer; contacted DL's loan officer to claim DL had submitted a fraudulent loan application; took money out of DL's bank account without her consent to pay his rent; and logged into the security system at the home of DL's mother and spied on DL, per the Washington Post.

DL's attorneys, who'd asked for a far lower $100 million in damages, say the woman was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from the harassment, which they say even led her to contemplate taking her own life. "It's been about two years or three years," the woman says of the harassment campaign to KHOU, which agreed to shield her identity. "It's been painful and scary." After the verdict was announced Wednesday, DL's attorney thanked the jury, slamming Jackson's behavior as "abhorrent" and praising DL's "courage in fighting back," per a release. "While a judgment in this case is unlikely to be recovered, the compensatory verdict gives DL back her good name," lawyer Bradford Gilde said. (More revenge porn stories.)