A woman says her life was ‘ruined’ after nude images of her were shared on a ‘revenge porn’ website by her former math teacher.
Kaitlyn Cannon, now 29, took and shared the nudes with a boy she was then in a relationship with.
However, two years later she received a text from a friend who warned her that photos had been shared to a Dutch website that features sexual images shared without the subject’s consent.
Shockingly, Cannon discovered that the man who had uploaded the photos was her former math teacher, Christopher Doyle, who had worked at the school she attended.
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Cannon filed a lawsuit against Doyle after an investigation revealed the nude selfies were posted from his home IP address.
Cannon, from New Jersey, says she had no idea how the photos got from her ex-boyfriend onto Doyle’s computer.
Giving testimony in court, Cannon became tearful as she spoke about the impact it had on her life.
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"It ruined my whole life in New Jersey because I felt like I couldn't leave my house," she said.
"I felt unsafety in my own body, feeling like it didn't belong to me anymore."
After the images were shared online, some of which showed her face, Cannon says she had an influx of Facebook friend requests from men and that her parents and grandparents started to receive sexually explicit phone calls.
"I was shocked and confused, hoping it wasn't real,” she told the court, according to Insider.
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"I didn't think there would be someone in my life who would do this kind of thing.
"He's my former teacher. He's not someone who's supposed to see me that way."
In the fallout of the images being shared, Cannon says she began to feel a mix of emotions including shock, violation and revulsion - she was eventually diagnosed with PTSD.
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At court, a jury of four men and three women decided that Doyle had violated New Jersey's nonconsensual pornography statute as well as a law against publicly disclosing private facts and awarded Cannon $10,000 in damages.
Her lawyer Cali P. Madia told Insider: "Unfortunately, despite this egregious finding, the jury awarded KC a mere $10,000 in damages.
"We're obviously delighted that the jury saw through the defendant's story, but also disappointed that the award doesn't reflect the real harm the defendant caused."
Cannon has since created a TikTok channel to talk about her experiences and to raise awareness of revenge porn.
Claire Reid