Susanna Gibson admits she was naive – knew nothing about pornography and believed her husband when he asked her to allow a small number of people to watch them having sex online.
"This was his fantasy," she recalls. "He had done all this research apparently. This site was safe, so he wanted essentially a safe way of someone doing that was to livestream. I did it a few times. It wasn’t for me, and I told him, and that was that."
What she didn’t know was that the livestreams were recorded and shared.
"This was essentially a bot – some kind of software recording a lot of the content that gets streamed and then uploading it to a pirate site."
After the Supreme Court struck down Roe versus Wade, Gibson – who’s a nurse practitioner specializing in reproductive health – decided to run for an open seat in the General Assembly.
"I figured it’s the suburbs of Richmond, and a nurse/practitioner, mother of two who’s involved with the soccer teams and the swim team and all of that – if a Dem was going to win in an R+1 district, it could be me."
Then came word that the Washington Post had found the videos online and would write about them. Gibson was devastated.
"I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t drink, I couldn’t physically lift myself off the floor. Almost every male member of the General Assembly and several male lobbyists shared my images amongst themselves."
She tried to get the images taken down, but it wasn’t easy.
"Platforms don’t have to remove non-consensual intimate images, and it’s expensive for them to hire content moderators, and so a lot of them just don’t. X, formerly known as Twitter, is probably the worst of all of them in my experience and in a lot of other people’s experience."
Eventually, Twitter did remove the videos.
"The Washington Post article came out at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and later that day it was taking over X," Gibson says. "X actually decided to black out for a little bit of time to scrub X of these images, and it wasn’t because they felt bad for me. It was because they wanted other content to be able to get through, but that’s how many times my images were shared. One post had 5.9 million views."
Gibson began doing research and discovered she was not alone.
"A few years ago, when porn hub was forced to remove non-consensual imagery from their site, they had to remove 80% of their content overnight."
And when those non-consensual digital intimate images or NDII’s go public, victims often suffer in ways long associated with rape and other forms of sexual violence.
"Ninety percent of victims experience significant mental health problems – anxiety, depression, PTSD. Half of victims contemplate suicide, and one in twelve Americans, by the way, is a victim of NDII – most just don’t know it."
So she decided to keep on campaigning.
"I never considered dropping out, because I didn’t do anything wrong! Who did things wrong were people who recorded it and uploaded it without my knowledge and consent."
And she got nearly 49% of the vote, with strong support from younger voters.
"Nine out of ten millennial women have taken and shared intimate images of themselves, and I think there’s a generational divide in understanding that this is normal dating and sexual behavior."
Now, she’s started a non-profit called My Own Image and is lobbying in Virginia and six other states to impose strong criminal penalties on people who post intimate images or deep fakes without the consent of those who appear.
"If I have a little bit of a platform, and I didn’t use it to help other people, I would really be disappointed in myself I think."
Federal law does allow victims to sue for damages, but Gibson says few people can afford a lawyer to pursue that remedy, so she’s also backing efforts in Congress to make NDII a crime. But she’s not banking on bills sponsored by Senators Ted Cruz and Amy Klobachar.
"Even if Take It Down passes or the Shield Act passes, you have to find a federal prosecutor who is willing to prosecute the crimes, and there’s a few different reasons why I highly doubt that would happen."
Which is why she says state laws are essential. Many people know about Gibson’s unfortunate experience.
"Just in case everyone missed it on CNN and NBC and ABC – one of my donors was in Belgium and found out on the Belgium news. That’s how insane the media coverage was."
She’s also hoping to educate the media and the public about this problem – helping people to understand that NDII is not the victim’s fault.
"There is an incredible amount of victim-blaming and shaming – you know, ‘Why did you send that video or that picture in the first place? Don’t you know what’s on the Internet stays on the Internet?' That’s just the modern-day equivalent version of saying, ‘Well of course you got sexually assaulted. Why were you walking home alone at night?’ or ‘Why was your skirt so short.’"
She says there’s bi-partisan support for what she’s doing, and because her story is now widely known, many lawmakers are willing to take her call. A footnote to this story – Gibson is getting a divorce, and she hasn’t ruled out running for public office again in the future.
