Last Wednesday, revenge porn site owner Hunter Moore was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
Moore operated the now defunct site Is Anyone Up?, which allowed users to anonymously submit nude photos. As expected, the vast majority of the pics submitted were done without the permission of the person in the photos. Ex-lovers, evil friends, and hackers submitted most of the content on the site.
Moore, who described himself as a “professional life-ruiner”, didn’t just rely on users to submit photos. At one point, Moore paid a friend named Charles Evans to hack into women’s e-mail and steal intimate photos.
One of the victims, Kayla Laws, had topless photos of herself stolen by Evans and posted on Moore’s site. Since then, Kayla’s mother Charlotte Laws has become an anti-revenge porn activist and is one of the reasons why Moore was in court last week, where he faced charges of fraud and identity theft.
In her testimony, Kayla described what happened when her photos went viral, which “completely flipped [her] world upside down.”
Her entire testimony can be found here, but I decided to pick out a few parts that show exactly what happens when intimate pictures go viral.
Kayla on how the photos were hacked:
A few months before I was hacked, I had taken the photos alone in the mirror in my bedroom. These photos had never been seen nor sent to anyone. I had absolutely no intention of letting anyone see them.
I took tons of photos. Most of them were clothed. I emailed them to myself to eventually save on my computer. They were in a private folder called “my pix” along with a plethora of other photos of my dogs, little brothers, parents and such.
Then she went into detail about the day she found out she had been hacked:
I found out my photos were online while at my then waitressing job.
I received a phone call from the hostess not working that night telling me to step outside because she had something urgent to tell me. I stepped outside and she proceeded to tell me that I had a topless photo online along with my full name, Twitter account link, and current city.
On how she was fired from her job:
I was hoping no one would see it, but within a day a mass text with my photo had been sent to everyone at my restaurant.
The assistant manager said she could get me fired over it, and I lost a role in a film, not to mention the tens of thousands of strangers who saw, commented on or even possibly saved the photo.
She even said that Ron Jeremy contacted her:
When I got home that night I noticed a bunch of random guys adding me on Facebook and following me on social media. I received vile sexual messages and rude comments. One guy told me he saved the photo, which mortified me.
The porn star Ron Jeremy even contacted me to “talk business.”
Moore refused to remove the photos
He even tweeted her photos to 600,000 followers
Hunter Moore instead decided to publicly brag online to his 600,000 followers by lying about me and further damaging my reputation. He called me a whore, and he wrote on Twitter, “I fucked Charlotte Laws’ daughter so many times” and “her daughter sucks the best cock.”
Your honor, I’ve never been in the same room with Hunter Moore except in court.
Kayla even has a stalker
Once he noticed that we had seen him, he sped off, almost crashing into our neighbor’s wall. My mom received threatening phone calls and tweets from members of Hunter Moore’s cult.
Some people said they would kill her, and Hunter Moore himself said he would buy a gun and kill the person who started the FBI investigation, who happened to be my mother.
Moore threatened to ruin her life
I’m not sure how to end this article. Thankfully, there’s a quote from Kayla that sums up my feelings:
There is no ounce of humanity in Hunter Moore and nor do I believe he is capable of rehabilitation. This man is full of hate.
I’m sure Moore’s fellow federal prison inmates will enjoy his presence for the next two years.
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