What Rob Kardashian did to Blac Chyna could be illegal ‘revenge porn’ — Lawyers
ROB KARDASHIAN started his Wednesday morning with a sharp-tongued social media attack directed at Blac Chyna, his model ex-fi ancee, the mother of his baby and a regular punching bag for his reality TV star family.
In a series of posts on Instagram and Twitter, Kardashian accused Chyna of infidelity and drug use and claimed she was exploiting him financially. He called her a cheater, a fraud and a “crazy person” and posted a video of Chyna kissing another man that Kardashian claimed she sent him on Independence Day.
Then came the act that turned Kardashian’s petty rant into something more serious: photos, first on Instagram and later Twitter, of a topless Chyna blasted to his nearly 10 million followers — seemingly without her permission.
In all 50 US states, that move is cruel. In California, where the two celebrities live, it’s also illegal.
Since 2014, California’s penal code has defined “revenge porn,” or “nonconsensual pornography,” as the intentional distribution of intimate photos or videos of another “identifi able person” that were intended to remain private and, when shared, caused “serious emotional distress.”
The offence carries a penalty of up to six months in jail and a fi ne of up to US$1,000.
Before revenge porn became a crime, judges would tell victims, who are often women, that they had no legal redress because they had consented to sending the original image. But, activists argued, consenting to their naked body being seen by an intimate partner alone is not the same as consenting to it being seen by the internet.
The issue gained little traction with lawmakers until 2014, when a trove of hundreds of private celebrity photos — mostly of women and many with nudity — were leaked onto 4chan and spread across other social networks.
Today, two-thirds of US states have revenge porn laws on the books. Some consider the crime a misdemeanour, where others, like Illinois, categorise it as a felony. Some 10.4 million Americans, about four per cent of US internet users, have been threatened by revenge porn or had their private images shared, according to 2016 report from the Data & Society Research Institute and the Centre for Innovative Public Health Research.
Revenge porn is “an assertion of control and dominance,” celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom, who often represents victims of sexual mistreatment, told The Washington Post. Bloom said the mindset of the distributor, often an aggrieved ex- lover, is this: “I’m going to get back at you by humiliating you.”
And it’s done, she said, “in the way that we always humiliate women: about their bodies.”
“It’s disgusting,” Bloom said. “It’s a very modern way of being misogynistic.”
In that way, she believes California’s revenge porn law “clearly applies” to Kardashian’s behaviour toward Chyna.
“The main point of it is that even if Chyna sent him nude photos, if she didn’t want them posted publicly, the law protects her,” Bloom told The Post.
Both she and Carrie Goldberg, a New York-based lawyer who founded a firm dedicated to fighting sexual exploitation, argued that the invective Kardashian employed shows what he was thinking, that the reality star meant to insult and harm Chyna with slut-shaming jabs.
“With the accompanying words, there can be no misgivings about his intent,” Goldberg said.
Kardashian accused his estranged lover of sleeping with another man “in the same bed Chyna and I made our baby in.” The couple’s child, Dream Kardashian, was born in November 2016 amid her parents’ on- again, off- again relationship. They began dating in January of that year and were engaged by April.
The two starred in an E! reality TV show about their relationship and split up a month later, reported the Associated Press.
Chyna is a former stripper who has been unapologetic about her sexuality. Kardashian designs socks for a living but is best known as the brother of his more famous sisters, Kim, Kourtney and Khloe — who were once friends with Chyna until their half- sister, Kylie Jenner, began dating rapper Tyga.
Tyga, it turns out, had previously dated Chyna and fathered her first child. This, Kardashian claimed in one of his Wednesday- morning rants, is the only reason Chyna wanted to have a child with him — to get back at Tyga.
Kardashian’s name and celebrity makes what he did Wednesday morning unlike any other revenge porn case Goldberg has seen. “It’s completely unprecedented for somebody with such an enormous
social media following to be the perpetrator here,” she said.
That Kardashian distributed the photos so widely could actually help Chyna in a civil courtroom, if she decides to take that legal route. California is one of a dozen states that allows victims of revenge porn to seek damages, Goldberg said, and the potential damages “would be significant because of his social media influence.”
Even though Instagram quickly shut down his account, Kardashian managed to move the rant and nude photos temporarily to Twitter, before that social platform also blocked the revealing photo. But just within the few minutes the nude picture was online, it got thousands of retweets and was likely screenshot just as many times, Goldberg said.
“If she has the desire to contain the images, that’s a huge undertaking,” she said. “That then translates into dollars she would have to spend.”
Bloom said a third path Chyna could choose to take is one that recently worked for one of her celebrity clients, actress Mischa Barton.
Barton, best known for her role in “The O.C.,” successfully used a restraining order against some exboyfriends who were threatening to sell private images of the actress. A judge ruled that the act constituted a form of domestic violence.
“Note to Rob Kardashian: revenge porn is a crime,” Bloom tweeted on Wednesday. “Knock it off.”
When The Post asked if she had plans to represent Chyna in this case, Bloom declined to comment. She did say that she hopes that “Chyna stands up for herself.” “We have the right to say no to the release of explicit images,” Bloom said. “It doesn’t matter what images may already be out there.” — WP-Bloomberg