Former model gets community service for ‘body shaming’
Danielle Mathers charged for posting mocking photo of naked elderly woman
“Every day that picture lives online is another day of humiliation.” MICHAEL N. FEUER L.A. CITY ATTORNEY
A former Playboy model, Danielle Mathers, has been sentenced to community service for secretly photographing a naked older woman in a Los Angeles gym and then posting the picture on social media, court documents and officials said.
According to the criminal complaint, Mathers, 30, was charged in Los Angeles Superior Court in November 2016 for using a “concealed” camera to take a photograph of the woman, who was 70 at the time, in July and then posting it online.
Mathers “uploaded the photograph to her Snapchat account, with comments about the woman’s appearance and a picture of Mathers covering her mouth,” Michael N. Feuer, the Los Angeles city attorney, said in a written statement Wednesday.
Police investigated, acting on a tip from LA Fitness officials.
Feuer said Mathers entered a plea of no contest to a misdemeanour invasion of privacy charge on Wednesday and will perform 30 days of community labour. She was also placed on probation for three years, according to the city attorney’s office.
Tom Mesereau, co-counsel on her case, said in a telephone interview Thursday she will also pay $60 restitution to the victim.
Dana Cole, another of Mathers’ lawyers, said in a telephone interview Thursday that his client had entered a not guilty plea after she was charged but then agreed to “accept responsibility.” He said that she had posted a video apology online soon after taking the photograph last year in which she said she had only meant to send the image to a friend.
“I think the upshot is she wanted to go to schools to talk about the evils of social media and how simple mistakes can be catastrophic, and the judge did not want her in schools,” he said.
Instead, the community service in- volves graffiti removal, he said.
Mathers, who was Playboy’s Playmate of the Year in 2015, is not working, he said, but she hopes to go to nursing school.
While Mathers’ Snapchat posts were later deleted, the image of the woman in the shower area was published with the words: “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either,” in newspapers and online media organizations. It soon set off a backlash about “body shaming” and bullying online.
In California, it led to a passage of a Senate bill supported by Feuer, who said he was optimistic it would become law. He wrote that he was “incredulous” that while taking the picture was clearly against the law, the distribution “didn’t have any real consequences.”
A person whose nude or partly clothed photo is taken without permission would be entitled to restitution in the amount needed to take the picture out of public distribution, under the bill.
“That’s crucial, because every day that picture lives online is another day of humiliation,” Feuer said.