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This week, we’re talking about the harassment that often greets women online. And the final story story in today’s episode comes from a woman who’s actually not even very online.
FRANCESCA: I didn’t have Facebook, I had Instagram that I barely used, I use email for work-related stuff or personal related to my family, but other than that I don’t have an online persona.
This is Francesca. And even though she is a millennial, she’s not someone who lives in a world of Twitter mentions and Instagram DMs. So, for example, if an ex wanted to contact her, it would probably be kind of a hassle.
But a few years back, Francesca noticed she was hearing from exes … a lot.
FRANCESCA: Like, once every other month in 2015, I would get an email from an ex and it would just be something pretty random. One time a current girlfriend of my ex sent me a naked picture of myself. It was just bizarre. Like: Who is this person, how does this person have this picture of me, and why are they emailing me? What is going on here?
And the messages started popping up all over the place — not just in her email.
FRANCESCA: I started getting messages on my work phone, from a guy I had gone on a few dates with.
They had gone on one or two dates over a year ago. Francesca’s a social worker, and she’s very careful about who she shares her employment information with — her work number was unlisted, and she knew she wouldn’t have given it to this relative stranger.
FRANCESCA: And now he’s somehow gotten access to my work cell phone number, and he was sending me messages that were like, I’m walking by your house. And so I was really scared for my safety because I thought that there was a stranger out there essentially who was trying to come after me.
She wasn’t sure how to react: The messages were weird, she’d talk about them with her friends and her boyfriend, but they didn’t seem like anything she could do much about.
And one ex-boyfriend had done something really strange.
FRANCESCA: He had taken a near nude picture of me and put it as his Facebook profile picture.
Francesca doesn’t have Facebook, so he’d sent a friend request to her best friend instead.
FRANCESCA: So my best friend contacted me and she was like, Oh my gosh, this person just friend requested me. It’s a naked picture of you. And we were like, What is happening here? Like, this doesn’t make any sense.
When the Facebook thing happened, Francesca decided it was time to see a lawyer to find out if she could get the profile taken down. She’d heard about a lawyer who specialized in revenge-porn cases.
FRANCESCA: And I looked her up, and I was like, Oh my gosh, she really is the only one — this is back in 2016 — she’s like the only one in the United States that’s doing this, and pushing for legislation about revenge porn and privacy, and looking at victims’ rights in this way. And so I contacted her immediately.
That lawyer was Carrie Goldberg. (Her book about her work, Nobody’s Victim, will be out next month.) After she had her own experience with an abusive ex, Goldberg realized what limited legal tools there were to fight harassers who used the internet as a weapon. Since then, her firm has taken on institutions like school districts and tech companies for failing to protect victims. And she’s consulted on revenge-porn legislation in nearly a dozen states; she helped draft New York’s bill, which the governor just signed into law this month.
Francesca explained to Goldberg who this guy was and how they’d broken up. And Goldberg’s immediate reaction was: This doesn’t sound right.
CARRIE: I said, No, it’s not, it’s not him.
MOLLY: What made you say that?
CARRIE: Because it didn’t fit the pattern.
To hear what happened next — and how Goldberg and Francesca finally got to the bottom of all those messages — click above, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.