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That's the message New Jersey's Kaitlyn Cannon is sending to other victims of "revenge porn," after she successfully sued her former high school math teacher who shared her naked photos.
An Ocean County jury last week ruled Cannon should be awarded $10,000 in damages, as first reported by Insider.
Cali Madia, one of Cannon's attorneys said that she, Cannon, and lead trial attorney Daniel Szalkiewicz are largely pleased with the trial's outcome.
"While we can’t help but be a little dismayed by the amount of damages awarded," said Madia, "we take some comfort in knowing the new federal statute will prevent it from happening again."
The new statute provides for a liquidated amount of $150,000 without the victim needing to go through her actual damages like a lifetime of therapy, reputation management, pain and suffering, Madia explained.
In other words, the minimum any victim of revenge porn can receive upon a finding that the perpetrator is responsible for posting the content became $150,000 as of last October.
Cannon, a Wall Township native, discovered the photos were online in March 2018 when a friend reached out to her, according to Insider. The posts showed her face, her first name, her last initial, and her hometown, the outlet said.
An investigation revealed the photos were linked to an IP address that belonged to Christopher Doyle, her former math teacher at Wall Township High School, according to Insider.
The photos were originally sent to Cannon's high school boyfriend, she testified. The boyfriend said he lost the phone, and it remains unknown how the photos ended up on Doyle's computer, according to Insider.
Cannon, a Penn State grad, said she did not send the photos to Doyle and Doyle's lawyer argued he wasn't the first one to share the photos, as reported by Insider, and may have seen them elsewhere online.
Meanwhile, the website the photos were uploaded to was removed by Dutch authorities in 2018, Cannon's lawyer said, citing the New York Post.
Doyle testified he had taken a leave of absence from Perth Amboy High School in 2020, according to Cannon's lawyers. It is unknown if Doyle remains as a teacher, though his website is still up.
Doyle, Perth Amboy High School Keith Guarino and Assistant Principal Dan Carhart did not respond to e-mails sent by Daily Voice on Tuesday, August 24.
"A big argument made by [Doyle] was that [Cannon] continued to live her life, so she wasn’t really harmed," her attorney tells Daily Voice. "This happening to her changed the entire trajectory of her life."
When Madia and Szalkiewicz first met Cannon, she was a producer at an educational television network.
After the incident involving her photos happened, she changed paths entirely, her attorney said. Cannon also testified that in the five years since the leak, she endured nightmares, panic attacks, lost friends and spent hours in therapy.
Cannon enrolled in graduate school, became a licensed social worker, and now dedicates her life to helping people who are going through the same things she went through.
"There’s a real dearth of resources for victims of nonconsensual pornography and [Cannon] is remedying that," her attorney said. "It doesn’t mean she wasn’t impacted; it means she doesn’t want people to go through what she did."
Cannon now shares her experiences with revenge porn on TikTok and discusses everything from trauma and its impact on the body, finding a therapist to her own experience, and more. Following the verdict, she invited victims and survivors to reach out if they needed her help.
Cecilia Levine also contributed to this report.
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