The Trauma of Revenge Porn

It was April 2008 when I took my first prescription anxiety pill. It helped calm the fear I felt whenever I spotted my ex-boyfriend driving behind me on my way home from work.

He was a 260-pound bodybuilder who posed with machine guns on social media.

Back when we dated, when he was angry with me, he would punch his car and tear up the plants outside of my house in fits of rage. We broke up. And eventually, I stopped seeing his car. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was over.

But it wasn’t.

Two years later, I discovered an online gallery of nude photos of myself after Googling my name. My photos were alongside galleries of other women that my ex had dated. My full name, the city where I lived and my occupation were listed in the gallery as well.

The room started spinning. My hands shaking, I messaged my ex-boyfriend and demanded that he remove the photos. He blocked me. I called the police. But they were powerless because what he had done was not a criminal offense in Florida at the time. After sending a copyright infringement notice to the website owner, the photos came down.

But it was just a matter of time until they resurfaced. And they did.

The worst website was PinkMeth.com, a site devoted to humiliating women with shaming comments under their nude photos. Next to their photos were links to their Facebook, Twitter and Myspace accounts.