Christine
Appearances
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
It was one photo that I didn't even know existed. It was an implied boudoir photo shoot.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
I helped, well, so my sister went into the sheriff's department in Melbourne, Florida and was turned away. And this is also around the same time that the Florida's non-consensual pornography laws enacted. So it's not only, you know, harassing, stalking, a federal crime, it's... at this point, actually illegal in the state of Florida, this exact thing.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
And if you read the statute, it is in layman's terms. It is absolutely for this exact situation. And so she gets turned away and I'm like, oh, that's bullshit. So I'm going to compile information for them. I'm going to print the statute out for you. I don't live near her at this point, but I try to go in there with her
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
When I'm in town one day, but I want to say it was like a weekend or a holiday and that division just wasn't open. So I was like, I'm going to leave this binder with you. You're going to go in there and get someone to listen to you. Ultimately, she went in there and they did not listen to her. And I remember...
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
sending them an email after the fact and being like, hey, I would be glad to come bring a training to your officers on this new law. Clearly, they don't understand the law. Please provide training and I'm, you know, a newly sworn in lawyer that would be happy to help you and train your officers with this new law.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
They did not like that email and, you know, assured me that their officers were trained and doing their job.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
What he's posting, because how you have... Again, it's so hard to explain this. And we were so involved in the 4chan world for so long. It sounds crazy to normal people who probably... I wouldn't know about this if it weren't for this. So on 4chan, it's anonymous. But then a lot of times they would... take their conversations offline to Kik, K-I-K, is the platform messaging system.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Again, an anonymous messaging system, and I'm mansplaining this to someone who does this for a living, so I'll stop now.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
So, you know, we were trying to tie those screen names that he's leaving. So the screen names that are attached to what he's posting on 4chan, we're seeing what those people are posting. We're saying, hey, kick me at, insert kick name here, finding the ones that are connected to those specific kick names. Because again, it has to all be the same person.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
This particular person had a very weird way of typing names. in which there were three periods and it's all spaced out. Not like a typical dot, dot, dot. It was like dot, space, space, dot, space, space, dot. And just very odd. Like that's not how people typically talk even on the internet, especially on the internet.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
So we're using all these little clues to kind of figure out, all right, as a whole, let's zoom out. What is this person interested in? What are they posting?
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
We find it's, you know, the same five women and girls, because some of them are underage at the time.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Yeah, and to tie this back to the post about the back porch, so his current fiance, again, one of the victims, you know, occasionally he would post weird things like nudes of himself even without a face. Um... Just different fetishes or desires.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
And I think in this particular case with the back porch, so his fiancée at the time, that's their shared home, her testimony is kind of important at that instance of like, hey, confirm this is your back porch. And so we really wanted to loop her in, but she's his current fiancée. Can we trust this person? And, you know,
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
You try to think of how you would react in a situation, but not knowing the person on the other end. We don't personally know her. We didn't know any of these women. So we didn't know how they were going to react to any of this. So we weren't really quite sure when to or if we should even loop them in. So ultimately, we eventually decided, we all need to band together.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Individually, they don't care. But if we can band together, show that this is a bigger issue than just one person getting harassed, and this is an issue for society as a whole, maybe they'll take us seriously. So at that point, that's kind of when we reached out to them on any social media platform or contact information that we could find. and kind of filled them in at that point.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
I compiled a, essentially a binder of like facts and circumstantial evidence that connected, because again, we don't have legal evidence at this point too. This is all kind of circumstantial evidence at this point. When we looped in the other girls, we did, again, have screenshots of some confessions and things like that.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
So pretty substantial circumstantial evidence, but circumstantial nonetheless. No subpoenas at this point or anything like that. So Dana and Madison and I compile this little revenge porn for dummies kind of. Knowing our experience going into... the sheriff's office, knowing that this is going to be a fight, let's be armed with the law at least. Let's be right.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Let's have the laws printed out and referenced in front of us. They have to listen to us, right? So we compiled this little binder. We had background. We had each individual victim and like a snippet of their backstory. We had any potential law that I saw that could potentially be violated from each jurisdiction, including federal.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Again, I'm a very, very young attorney at this point, like first year, right? So, you know, I think I'm hot shit, but I don't really know that much. But I did take, you know, internet law and social media law and things like that that interested me in law school. And you have that base... you know, knowledge at least of where to find the law at least.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
So I was familiar with the Florida statute because again, that was just, it interested me and I thought it was a move in the right direction.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
There's no federal law for revenge porn or sexual cyber harassment or anything like that. But there are prohibitions against cyber stalking and cyber harassment.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Um, so Dana was actually there with me too. You know, I'm, I'm marching with my little binder. And, um, again, I, I hope that most people don't ever have to go report a crime like this. But when you go, obviously you don't want to call 911. You go into the police station.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Yes. I was probably honestly coming back from work. So I already had my lawyer uniform or costume on, you know? Um, so. Okay.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
You go into the, I mean, theoretically, you could call the non-emergency line, but, you know, you go into the police station. There's a desk with a police officer who is either hopefully new or did something really bad to get this position because you're just sitting behind a desk, right? And, you know, you walk up and they're like bored. They're just sitting there.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
And you're like, I'd like to report a crime and fill out a police report. And then they depose you. They absolutely depose you. Well, what happened? Well, I actually have this whole thing together. So you can just read it if you want. In fact, I made a copy here. Here's a copy. Flipping through it. This isn't a crime. How'd they get the photos? You know, you hear... All of it.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
And I'm like, where are your credentials? Can you just hand this off to a detective and let them make the decision on whether this is a crime or not? Not to be rude, but I don't really trust your judgment when your job is to sit behind the desk. They don't even trust you out on the street with a gun, bud. Get this to the real detective, please.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
So ultimately, we were there for probably over an hour begging them just to let me fill out a police report. just for the opportunity and privilege to fill out this police report.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
No, and that's what shocked me too. I'm like, at least give me the form. So ultimately I demanded that I have the form. And so he was just done with talking to me, I'm sure, and gave me the form to fill out.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Six of us go into police stations scattered all over the country. Two in New York, one in Central Florida, one in Daytona area, Madison and Melbourne, and me in Manatee County. And two of us came back with police reports, too. Wow.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
So... It made its way to a detective. And ultimately, the detective looked at it and was like, yeah, we're not capable of handling this. I'm going to send this to the local FBI office. So my Manatee County Sheriff's Department is the only one out of the six that actually did the right thing and moved the file to the proper jurisdiction.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
If it were anybody else, they might even still just be sitting there as local police reports, which is insane to think about, right? Yeah.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Yes. And shout out to the FBI because they are amazing ones. You can actually get to them.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
No. So, okay, that's the interesting part of, I mean, it's a legal nerd interesting part. I'm sure you all have different parts that you find more fascinating. Let's get nerdy.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
But that's what's so frustrating about the lack of police intervention and law enforcement intervention is when you're in law enforcement, you have an inherent authority really with probable cause to pull subpoenas, right?
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
I can file a lawsuit and then open discovery and then have the subpoena power to get subpoenas from different people or entities and things like that. So what Madison and I ended up having to do is file a lawsuit
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
The court declined... our request to do that. So we had the decision at that time on whether or not we wanted to drop it or refile the complaint with our legal names in there. And just knowing that that was going to be
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
on the Google forever if you Google our names and you can go in and look at all the fun drama of the case because the docket's there, whereas the other victims in the case are protected. In the criminal case, you'll notice it's everyone's initials and that's to protect victims of a crime.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Yeah. And again, through the civil process, you're treated almost like you're a gold digger looking for money or something. Opposing counsel, the magistrate, judges, everyone is acting like this is the most ridiculous case and that...
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
It was just very frustrating and it was just very eye-opening on, again, being a young lawyer and just seeing it from the other side on how the system really is not set up to help you at all.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Jaina was in a fraternity and I was in a sorority. And we were paired up to do homecoming together. He was the president of his fraternity at the time. And I was nominated for the homecoming queen for my sorority.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Well, we'll solve any crime by dinnertime. Dinnertime just happened to be 10 years later, so we would have starved to death.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
I really don't think I did. And if I did, I blocked it out because I think it had been so much time that if anything, I was just like, oh, he looks like shit, you know?
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
I think that's just... I think my exact words were, oh, they're not starving him. He was very greasy.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
He's allowed to talk after all of us. And so, you know, we had the whole dramatic him turning to us and apologizing to Dana first, by the way. So that was funny. But, you know, he turns to us in the crowd and like the United States Attorney and FBI agent are kind of like standing in between us. Like, do not come closer. Like, I'm going to dropkick you kind of thing.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
And the, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, like the dramatic effect and all of that.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
I don't think I remember you crying. I'm sure you did. I remember Madison crying. I remember Madison crying during her victim impact statement, too. I think I like compartmentalized myself to be in like lawyer mode. So I don't think I got emotional at all. I was just kind of like stone cold face, but I was definitely excited.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Yeah, I was just staring at him even when he was doing this whole thing. But yeah, I think I definitely remember like feeling excited, like, wow, wow. you know, this judge listened to us and was in utter shock and disbelief of how bad this was. And I think it was just that validation even. Again, like Dana was saying, there's so much, you know, sweat and tears that go into this.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
From all aspects of it, that it was just, like, validating more than anything that, wow, like, if put in the correct venue, like, this, you can make a difference. And, like, they care. Like, we made a difference, you know?
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
Yes. And so at this point, again, probably a character flaw, but we're just like, this is funny at this point. At least that's how I'm feeling. I'm like, this is terrible, but you got to laugh, right? Like, what are the odds? So yeah, we had to go back and do a sentencing. And at this point, you know, I'm pregnant. So we were hoping it wasn't in an inconvenient time.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
But ultimately, we had to go back almost a year later, I believe. Dana, do you think that sounds right?
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
okay, let's just take a beat. This will fizzle out. You're young. It's not a big deal. So then it kept getting worse and worse and worse. So- we ended up trying to report it to the police. And so I was kind of involved just helping my twin sister interact with the police station, researching. At this point, I'm in law school or about to go to law school.
Darknet Diaries
140: Revenge Bytes
So not that I was a professional at this point, but I was equipped a little bit better to do some research, to contact some people. So that's initially how I first got involved is truly just trying to help her deal with this terrible thing that was happening.