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The 404 Media Podcast
How Politician Turned Advocate Susanna Gibson Battles Non-Consensual Imagery
01:03:29
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- [00:08]
Sam
Hello and welcome to another special interview episode of the four four Media podcast. Four four Media is a journalist founded company and runs on your support. To subscribe, visit Four4Media co. You'll get bonus content every week and access to bonus content like subscribers only, podcast episodes and much more. I'm your host, Sam, and with me today is Susannah Gibson, a nurse practitioner who ran for a seat in the Virginia House of delegates in 2023 and is now a victim advocate for folks targeted by non consensual intimate imagery online. Hi, Susannah, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for chatting with me today.
- [00:47]
Susannah Gibson
Thanks for having me.
- [00:49]
Sam
Yeah, most people, I think listening probably recognize you from your candidacy and all the news stories surrounding it, including when you yourself became a victim of consensual imagery. But before we unpack all of that, I would love to get to know you a little bit deeper than that first. So, yeah, I mean, first of all, I guess, where are you? Where are you calling us from today?
- [01:16]
Susannah Gibson
So I am originally from Charlottesville, Virginia. I was born here, raised here, went to UVA for undergraduate and then moved essentially as far away as possible. Moved to San Francisco as soon as college was done and then came back to Virginia, but to Richmond, Virginia, about an hour away back in 2008. I am a nurse practitioner by training And I have two young children, almost 9 and almost 11. And yeah, ran for the House of Delegates in Virginia. I was the Democratic nominee in 2023. Had never wanted to be in politics before, ever. My mom was always very politically involved, but I have always been a really big advocate for sexual health and reproductive health care in general, family planning, especially with the adolescent and young adult population. Very cool. Yeah. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, the seat was open and it was one of the most, if not the most competitive seat in the House in Virginia. And I decided that a nurse practitioner or mother is who could win it.
- [02:35]
Sam
Very cool. I've weirdly spent a lot of time in Charlottesville and not that weird. I went to school in Harrisonburg, but I, I went to emu. Eastern Mennonite. Yeah. But I spent a lot of time partying at JMU and a lot of driving, driving down to Charlottesville and doing the same. And Richmond still very much has my heart, but yeah. So you decided to get into politics just because you saw the need for someone to step up after Raphael or what was that kind of thought process like when you first got into it?
- [03:10]
Susannah Gibson
Yeah, well, first of all, it's terrifying to, you know, just in general, to like say, I think I can do this. I think I would be the best choice. Like, especially as a woman, like, that is not a natural. We're not the ones in class. Or at least I certainly wasn't throwing their hands up shouting wrong answers. I was always the one that knew the right answer and was sitting there quietly because I was too afraid to like even raise my hand. So. But yeah, the seat Virginia had redistricted based on the 2020 census, and so lines were redrawn. And this particular district had always been very heavily gerrymandered Republican, but with that redistricting it moved to a 51R 49D district. So certainly winnable, but with the right Dem nominee and a lot of money. And I, when I decide to do something, I do it and I throw myself into it and no one will ever outwork me. And that was a promise I made to people who believed in me from the very beginning. And I think I proved that that's true. So I worked my butt off and was able to raise a lot of money and get a lot of support from people who didn't normally get into primaries. I was in a primary with an older retired man and a lot of people tend to stay out of primaries, but I was able to gain their support because I think people really sensed that I was genuine and that I was not a career politician. Right. Like, I just really cared about my community, about reproductive healthcare and then also healthcare policy in general has always been something important to me.
- [04:59]
Sam
Yeah. I would imagine as a nurse coming into this, you've seen firsthand, like the effects of things like sex education and reproductive education, reproductive health. And you know, I can, I can definitely see the call to kind of say, okay, if no one's going to do this, I need to do this.
- [05:20]
Susannah Gibson
If the people we elect in there are going to be the people that get to decide, like reproductive health care and access for the women and girls in Virginia, like I'm going to be there as a healthcare provider to speak up is kind of my thought process. But yeah, I also did home based primary care for almost a decade. So primary care for people who are homebound. So people who are very medically complex couldn't leave their home without significant difficulty, ambulance transportation, that kind of thing. So patients with ALS, Ms. patients on home ventilators, all of that. And I went in and out of their homes for the better part of a decade. And most of these patients were indigent and lacked a lot of resources and support. And so it really showed me the need for in the intersection of affordable housing and transportation. When their personal home, I'm probably going on too long. But when their home health care aides are the only ones that come into a house and get them up out of bed and help them toilet and feed them, and that home health care aides car breaks down and then they are unable then to get to that patient, what happens? Right. And so I really saw and understood the need and how people actually live in a way that I doubt very many legislators actually have ever experienced, even for a day, much less for a decade.
- [06:51]
Sam
Yeah, absolutely. How'd you first get into nursing? Because that's a tough career too, let alone politics.
- [06:59]
Susannah Gibson
I don't do anything easy. I have a degree in religious studies, actually from uva, so a bachelor's in religious studies. I thought I wanted to go to law school and then quickly decided I didn't. And a friend's mother was a nurse practitioner in the UVA PCR for a long time. And so I shadowed her a bit. And then I shadowed another nurse practitioner and volunteered at the UVA Teen Health center and really fell in love with particularly family planning, sexual education, reproductive health. And so went back to school at Columbia University and did an accelerated second degree program for people who have their bachelor's in something other than nursing. And then did my master's. Started my master's there and finished at UVA and worked full time at VCU while I did that.
- [07:56]
Sam
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, I know. I have a few friends who are nurses, and they are very hardworking, and I don't envy their jobs at all. So you're doing the Lord's work for real? Yeah. So I guess that kind of brings me to the reason probably most people, like, nationally, heard your story originally was this story that blew up about images that were leaked to the press, sent to the press involving you and intimate imagery. Let's kind of unpack that a little bit. Where were you when you found out that these images were going around? Kind of walk me through what you heard that they were. Who told you all that stuff?
- [08:45]
Susannah Gibson
So I was in clinic seeing patients. It was September 7th, actually. I remember it well. It was a Thursday afternoon, and around lunchtime, one of my consultants had. Who is a longtime consultant in Virginia politics. It's been around for a long time. And really actually kind of my. My guardian, my other guardian angel, other than Charles. And he had texted me and said, hey, this reporter contacted. Had contacted him and wants my number. And I said, okay, that's fine. Give it to her. And being just again, not thinking that there was anything that could ever. Why would I be afraid to talk to a reporter? Happy to. And he said, no, I'm not going to give it to her until I know what she wants. It's like, okay, well, go find out what she wants then, and then get back to me. And I guess they had an exchange and it went back and forth for about an hour. And she was like, I'm not telling you why I want to talk to her. Not going to happen. And she said, she's a mom of two young kids. Like, I don't want to have to go after her. And so it just was this back and forth. And finally I screenshot it, I wrote a text and screenshotted it. And he showed the screenshot to her and she finally told him. And he called me back and he said, they have pictures or videos of you having sex with your husband. And I mean, I just need people to know because people think that I posted these things, I uploaded them, I knew that they were out there. I had no idea, none ever, that recordings of me were made much less than put on a pirate, illegal pirate pornography site. And apparently what had happened was that. And I've found out a lot more since election, how this happened and all of that. But, you know, it's horrifying and it's profoundly violating as a human being to find out that there are intimate images, view or recordings of you online. Point blank period. Running for office, not running for office. It is a horrible violation of consent, and it is sexual violence. And I felt the, I've never, I've never been like wind knocked out of me feeling before, but I did, I felt like that. And I didn't even know what they had. And that reporter was kind enough to actually let us know where the links were that had been sent to her so that I could get them. I went home, figured out how to file DMCA takedown requests, like, had no idea, figured it out, filed them. I thought there were only three links because this is how naive I was to the world of pornography and like pirate user uploaded websites. And I thought it was done. And I was like, well, you know, if I got them down, if, you know, they happen to have got the links happen to have gotten sent to someone else, at least they're down, they're not active. Right. I didn't know until Saturday, two days later, when the Washington Post reporter came to a canvas launch where I had my daughter with me, that they had actually been put in a Dropbox file and sent to the ap, to the Washington Post and to another reporter I know as well. And everyone else declined to write a story on it. They said, this isn't a story, this is a crime. And didn't write on it. Didn't even contact me to ask me about it. But the Washington Post reporter did. And so that's how I found out. And then I found out on Saturday when she came up to me and my manager luckily was with me and kind of intercepted her as she started talking. Because I'm standing there with Senator Tim Kaine, who I just met, and my daughter, who was what, she was seven, right? Seven, seven and a half. And it was horrible. And that started a 48 hour, give or take back and forth with the Washington Post and the reporter and her editors. That was probably the longest and worst 48 hours of my entire life.
- [13:28]
Sam
And the Washington Post reporter is the same one that texted, originally sent a message. It was a different reporter.
- [13:35]
Susannah Gibson
It was someone else. It was.
- [13:36]
Sam
Wow.
- [13:37]
Susannah Gibson
Yeah. She's a young woman, this reporter, who chose not to and told me where the links were so I could get them taken down. She's a young mom. She's a young woman, She's a mom and she understood. There seems to be a generational divide and gap between. It seems to be the kind of 60 to 70 year old feminists actually are the ones that really one, don't understand and two, or have been the worst to me by far, I would say is a generalization. Not all, but by any means. But they tend to be the ones that have an issue. I think that's because when they were born, like they grew up during the period of radical feminism, which was anti sex. Sex is a tool of the patriarchy. Right. Like certainly no pornography, certainly no anything. And you know, as I've learned more about the different waves in eras of feminism, that really does make a lot of sense to me.
- [14:44]
Sam
But yeah, that like second wave feminism that thinks like all, all sex work is exploitation or that, you know, all sex in general is, like you said, like a tool of patriarchy, is still powerful. It's still out there. There's still an influence of that. But I would love to get into just like the generational divide in a few because I think that's very interesting. That's something that I've written about too, especially with millennials running profits now. But yeah, I just kind of want to unpack a little bit without getting into too much detail because I don't want people to try to go find this stuff, because I'm sure it's still available. But are we talking about how are these images captured? It was a screen recording.
- [15:27]
Susannah Gibson
Right.
- [15:27]
Sam
So there was a live stream or like, we're not talking about hidden cameras in your room. Like it was. Yeah, no, because I think some people just have heard like kind of the top lines of the story, but just like how it actually happened, because it does happen to a lot of people. I think it'll be helpful to hear.
- [15:45]
Susannah Gibson
Yeah. So what happened was my husband and I were having marriage difficulties a few years ago and we still are. I have filed for divorce, but not because of this, but. Right. But like we had been having difficulties in our marriage for a while and this is before I decided to run for office, before it was even on my radar. And so he came to me one day and he said, hey, I have this particular fantasy and you know, of people watching us have sex. I was like, okay, I'll try that. Right? Like I'm trying to save my marriage here and work on my marriage. And he, my husband had come to me, he had already researched it. He said this particular platform is the safest one. No one can record you. And yes, I totally understand that. I am naive in believing that. Okay, but like you trust your partner and he's technology savvy and I'm really not. And so he said he had done this research, it was safe, no one could be able to record you. You can block different areas of, you know, of the us, different states, all of that. And so I said, okay. And I tried it. And I tried it a few times, went to him and was like, I'm really not comfortable with this. This is not for me. And that was that. Right. Like it done. And unbeknownst to me, there are different types of software and bots where users. It's not like someone was recording this on their phone, right? Like recording a screen of this. It was this bot, if you will. It is a huge problem. It is all non consensual. This is not consensual recordings that people took, made or uploaded.
- [17:40]
Sam
Yeah, it's something that's meant to be like ephemeral. Um, and like you said, like you can kind of gate it by location to protect yourself or if you don't want to be like outed to your family or your community, which is a huge problem if you're doing sex work. It's something that people who are doing that for their full time jobs, they don't want family to know. So like you said, it's like it's, it's a huge. It's this industry almost. It's like this cottage industry of people pirating what should be. Yep, you know, something that isn't saved forever, then it suddenly is.
- [18:14]
Susannah Gibson
So.
- [18:15]
Sam
Yeah, that's, I think that's super interesting. And that's, that's an interesting thing to kind of, I guess, tease out like the technicalities of that. Because I think a lot of people don't realize, you know, they're like it's a live stream or it's a, it's a, it's a Snapchat that disappears. You know, it's stuff like that. It's just kind of like it gets saved even if you don't realize it a lot of the time.
- [18:34]
Susannah Gibson
Snapchat absolutely gets without.
- [18:39]
Sam
Big time.
- [18:39]
Susannah Gibson
And I think like consent, particularly in the digital age, as you just said, people don't understand that. So there is case law precedent in Virginia and I'm sure throughout the country that says there is a difference between consenting to something that people can see that exists only for a moment in time and exists only in their memory, and consenting to someone having a recording or downloading something that can be replayed and then shared in perpetuity. There is a difference. You know, you consenting to letting your boyfriend see you naked is not the same as you consenting to your boyfriend and his friend seeing you naked. Right. Very different things. And when it comes to the digital age and the digital world, that is something that people really do seem to grasp, have a difficult time grasping and understanding.
- [19:52]
C
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- [24:11]
Sam
So how did this, this story comes out in the Washington Post? They're the only ones that run with it. They break the story. What are the repercussions? Like, how does it affect the rest of your campaign? What do you get? Do you get things like harassment? Like what, what do you hear from people? And the fallout of this for you?
- [24:31]
Susannah Gibson
I mean, during the campaign. So I will say this. She wrote that article and it was her. And I know it was her editors as well, but they wrote that article in a way that framed it as, I'm essentially raising money for my campaign by having sex online, which is insane. I'm a nurse practitioner and I'm running for the most competitive seat in Virginia. I do not have time to be like, how much time does one person have? I have two young kids also and a husband who commutes and is an attorney. But they wrote it in a way without actually understanding. I never made any money. Like, first of all, to be clear, like, again, this was not sex work. It was kinky sex with my husband, a friend, right? Like, this is not. It's just not who I am. And I do feel that there's nothing wrong with sex work and I feel strongly about that, but it's just not accurate in terms of, like, what I was doing.
- [25:26]
Sam
It's not your work.
- [25:27]
Susannah Gibson
Yeah, it's not my work. I had.
- [25:28]
Sam
And it happened before the campaign, right?
- [25:30]
Susannah Gibson
Like, it was correct. But they wrote that article and they said, I think I Forget how many 12 or 14. You know, there were 12 or 14 videos uploaded to this illegal pirate site in the month of September of 2022. I'm like, I have no control over when illegal pirate sites upload things. But also recently have gone to this site and there's two minute videos and three minute videos and five minute videos. Like, people don't understand. They take a recording and they chop it up and they put in this. All pirate sites do this, right? Like, it's not this 12 separate sexual encounters. It is a two minute chunk of a video that they had obtained. So they wrote this article, the Washington Post did, in a way that essentially implied that, and really they, you know, they wrote it in a way that was sensationalized and the headline was written to draw attention. And they put a picture of me up in there with my scrubs and my dog and immediately this goes viral. X To put it in perspective, the videos of me X actually like blacked out for a chunk of time to try and scrub these videos off of X because it was taking over all of X. I mean, and we didn't have to ask them to do that. They did that. That is how many times non consensual recordings of me were posted on Twitter. X, whatever you want to call it. Just that day, just that day that it came out, that article came out about 3 o'clock and there was this immediate explosion of every national news organization in the country, then decided to follow it. And several not in the, not in the US One of my donors heard about it. He was in Belgium, right when this happened. Like it went, they were internationally spread and shared. And unfortunately what happened is the Virginia House caucus refused to let me respond or talk to any reporters. And women being silenced, by the way, is another topic we can talk about. But like at that point, I was on the floor of my bathroom with my heated floors, but like unable to get up off the bathroom. I couldn't eat, I couldn't drink, I couldn't physically lift myself up because it is sexual violence. And then to have national news organizations repeating something that is so not true and misleading, but also leads to further distribution and dissemination on a global level of non consensual images of you. Right? These videos. These videos and images, what? JR or JM Murkowski, JH Murkowski, whoever he was, posted a snippet of this video on his x that had 5.2 million views just from his one tweet and picture of me. So I mean millions of views and mass distribution. Most of the male members in the Virginia General assembly watched these videos and shared them amongst themselves. My coworker, my now state senator, who was a delegate at the time, who I shared an office space and staff with. We shared staff together, watched my video and then told me he didn't believe that I didn't know I was being recorded, okay? And banned me from going into the office, refused to let volunteers door knock with his stuff and my stuff. They had to choose. And I mean, it was just this immediate explosion of victim blaming, shaming, mass distribution. And without people understanding or even feeling bad, you have the lawmakers of a state sharing non consensual imagery of A female colleague, and they don't feel bad about it. There is a problem with this, and I think that reflects society's. I think one lack of understanding of technology and consent, but also the way that we view these crimes and that they're not crimes of sexual violence. Right. But what ends up happening, it happened with me, and it happens to women every day. Like, I am not special, to be clear. Like, what has happened to me happens all the time. It is very textbook. So these images go viral. They then get posted everywhere. And I immediately started getting death threats, rape threats. I've gotten over a thousand rape threats and well over that in death threats. 4chan and 8chan. A con started posting credible death threats with my address, my phone number, my names of my children and their ages and the things that they wanted people to come do to me and my children. So I had to move my children out of the home in the middle of the night that same night and go take them to a friend's house. I had reporters, especially from the Daily Mail, camped out in front of my house for two weeks. I had to leave the state to get them to leave. I lost my job. I have had difficulty finding a new job. And by the way, I'm really good nurse practitioner. I was the lead of an entire division at the major academic medical center in Virginia, like the level one trauma center. I was running an entire division at the age of 30. Like, I'm good at what I do. And I lost my job because of concerns of my reputation, all because of this one thing. But again, that happens to women. It's not because I ran for office. And I need people to understand that. Like, I don't care if people feel sorry for me or not. That is not the point of this. But they do need to understand the long lasting repercussions and impact that it has on victims and their families. Horrible. And I'm still dealing with it. I got posted up on another website that hosts victims of trafficking, sex trafficking as well, with my identifying information just about a month ago. So it's ongoing. It changes the way victims walk around in the world. It changes the way you view your safety. It is. Is something that devastates every aspect of your life.
- [32:38]
Sam
Yeah, I think people, of course, heard about this happening to you because of your run for office, but like you said, it's something that happens to lots of women, especially LGBT folks. It's something that happens all the time that people just don't speak up about because speaking up makes it worse in a lot of Cases. Not. Not always, but it's, you know, it. It's kind of that. That effect where you're bringing more attention to something because you're saying, this is not me. This is not okay. This is not consensual. And then people just latch onto that and spread it farther, which is just such a hard position to be in, because you want to set the record straight. You want to say this was non consensual, but by doing that, you put yourself in a position of more attention. So. Yeah, and I think it's so tough, too. I mean, we saw what happened to Katie Hill in 2019. It's something that I think female politicians get a lot is just that kind of shaming. And it's especially around topics of sexuality where people are criticizing what AOC is wearing. It's like, it's very normal outfits. I think it's got to be so hard to enter politics as a woman in this kind of environment. And also knowing that there might be images out there that you don't know about, or people might find something about you from your past that you were doing consensually that now is out there, not consensually. And Virginia especially has pretty good laws.
- [34:23]
Susannah Gibson
Right.
- [34:23]
Sam
Like about image abuse or, you know, the bar is very low.
- [34:32]
Susannah Gibson
Yeah. So in regards to the law. Well, first of all, I will say just to piggyback on the women ran for office. 90% of millennial women have taken and shared an intimate image of themselves. So nine out of 10 women, right. 40. I'm an older millennial. Let's say 42, 43 and younger. Nine out of 10 of those women, you know, have taken and shared an intimate image. It is a normal part of dating behavior. And so we have to really stop, you know, pointing the finger at women for doing this. Right. Like, the answer is not don't share intimate images of yourself with a partner. That is not the answer. Right. It's victim blaming and shaming, saying, why did you wear such a short skirt and then walk home alone at night? Of course you get sexually assaulted. Well, why would you send your partner a picture? Of course they're going to share it. No, incorrect. It is never a victim's fault that someone chooses to attack them. It is always the perpetrator's fault for choosing to harm them. And I think that is something that we really need to hammer home with people, especially in regards to this, in terms of the laws. So there's no federal criminal law prohibiting non consensual distribution of intimate images. There is in the reauthorization of the Violence against women act in 20, I want to say 2020, they created a civil cause of action so that you can actually sue someone for distributing images without your consent, but there's no criminal law. There are two federal acts that are very, very slowly making their way through Congress. The SHIELD act, which was Senator Amy Klobuchar, and then Take It down act, which is Senator Ted Cruz. And their language mimics each other. They'll probably be introduced kind of as one package, but they are slow moving. And there's a lot of pushback from some people concerned, criminal justice reform advocates in particular. And we can touch on that when we talk about Virginia. But so it is basically left up to the states right now to hold perpetrators accountable. And every state varies in terms of their law. Some are pretty good, some are horrific. So I will point to Pennsylvania and Arkansas, which are two states that I'm trying to work in Pennsylvania this year with my organization, but working in Arkansas and those state laws right now. In order to break this law, you have to be a former or current sexual partner of. We'll call it women. Right? But we know that it's just because it disproportionately targets and harms women, women of color, LGBTQ individuals, but 90% of victims are women. And so the perpetrator has to be a former or current sexual partner and have to have done it with the intent to. And in Pennsylvania in particular, it's like humiliate or harass. Right, that's it. But we know that there are so many other reasons, first of all, that people commit these crimes. But second of all, it's not just a former current intimate partner, which is why a lot of our organizations have been focusing and pushing to stop calling it revenge pornography, because it's not revenge. That insinuates that it was a former partner. And it also insinuates that the victim did something deserving of this to get revenge for. But also, pornography is entertainment. This is not entertainment. This is abuse material, which is why we say image based sexual abuse, or non consensual intimate images, or non consensual, whatever you want to call it, non consensual distribution of intimate images, non consensual pornography, whatever. But pornography is not entertainment. And this is not entertainment or is entertainment. And this is not Virginia's. We were successful in amending Virginia's criminal code earlier this year, which extended the statute of limitations in Virginia from one year when the crime occurred, to two years when the victim found out about the crime because so many victims like me, right. Like I had no idea that this had happened until reporters came and the statute of limitations had already passed. Right. So I couldn't hold, you know, if I was going to hold someone accountable in Virginia for distributing these images, you know, and uploading them to this pirate site. The statute of limitations had already been over a year by the time I found out. So we extended the statute of limitations in Virginia and then we also extended the types of images that were covered. And you'll see this in a lot of states where you have to be showing the nipples, genitals or buttocks. But now I'll just give you an example. Two weeks before my election, the Republican party of Virginia, the chair, Rich Anderson, decided to take screenshots of these non consensual recordings of me and put them on paid political mailers and mail them to thousands of voters in my district and outside of my district just to make sure that no one missed them. So they mailed out non consensual images of me, but because you couldn't see my nipple, it was legal. But what we did. Uh huh, yeah. So what we did earlier this year when we were amending the statute of limitations is we changed that. So now we chose the word obscene for Virginia because obscene was already in the Virginia code. Right. It was already defined in the Virginia code. And so now those mailers at Rich Anderson and the Republican Party of Virginia mailed out of me that is now illegal. So they cannot do that to any other female candidate or candidate running for office ever again. Right. So that's what we did in Virginia earlier this year. But it wasn't enough and it still wasn't where it needed to be. And so throughout last session and throughout my time trying to lobby and get some of Virginia's codes passed, I became friends with two criminal justice reform advocates and they're both brilliant in terms of policy. And one of them came to me last session and said, hey, I hear you're trying to create a new felony and remove intent in Virginia. You know we're going to kill your bill, right? And I said, the heck you are. And we sat down and started working together and have been able to come up with this model policy for states that we are introducing in several states and running this year without funding. We still don't have funding. So we are lobbying it ourselves and doing all the work ourselves, but have created model policy for states on the non consensual distribution of intimate images. And we can go over that if you'd like, kind of more in detail. But basically it takes the criminal justice reform advocates, it takes their viewpoints and their concerns and kind of merges it with the concerns and viewpoints of victims and victim survivor advocates. And it's one that both sides should be able to get on board with.
- [42:24]
Sam
Yeah, let's get into that a little bit because I know that you started my own image. You're working on getting the word out about this model legislation, as you mentioned introducing that. But instead of just kind of like quietly going back to nursing and moving on with your life, you found a different way to move on with your life, which is facing this head on and saying, you know, I was a victim of this thing. I'm not going to shut up about it. I'm going to try to make it better for people who are also targeted by similar abuses. So, yeah, walk me through kind of that decision, I guess, to, to kind of say, you know what, I'm not done here. I'm going to start working on my own nonprofit and doing it that way.
- [43:20]
Susannah Gibson
I think I started a pack originally easier to do. And because I have had post election, I had dozens of women from all women reach out from all around the country asking me for advice and saying I'm running for office or I was thinking about running for office and I've watched what has happened to you and I'm terrified what kind of advice you have. And I mean, at the time I really didn't have any. Right. Like, I was still getting things said to me at the grocery store. Right. Like I still, even to this day, like living where I live and running in my district and they were getting mail and digital ads and tv. Right. Like they know who I am.
- [44:14]
Sam
And so it's a small town.
- [44:17]
Susannah Gibson
Yeah.
- [44:18]
Sam
Type of place. It's not actually literally a small town. But you know, you see people at the grocery store.
- [44:23]
Susannah Gibson
You see people at the grocery store. And we live in the suburbs. Right. So yeah. And. And you know, I didn't have any advice. And I was still really. And still am, by the way. Like, I'm still healing. It's. It's very slow going. And each kind of distribution of these images is just another violation. And that's what people don't understand. So it just is this perpetual cycle of getting a little bit better and then getting re victimized. But, you know, I started developing relationships with some of these women and became a bit of a big sister or a sounding board or a mentor to some of them who were trying to deal with what was going on with them and looking for advice. And I was able to connect them with some of the people that had helped me, that I trusted to help them. And then really honestly. And one of the things I really want our organization to do because it's been so incredibly helpful for me. My ex, now ex husband has been sober for 13 years, involved in AA and it was interesting talking to him about it. He's like, you kind of are acting like I do when I am sponsoring somebody. Right. And so I began to think about it like that. And it's very true. And the most healing thing for me has been is to help other people. It's not helping myself. It's to be able to help those other women and just be there for them and give them someone to talk to who has been through it and truly understands. And so trying to help some of them, looking at their state laws and trying to figure out what I can do to help them. That's where the idea and kind of where this developed in terms of like wanting to start model policy in states and amending state criminal codes is trying to help those women that I had formed relationships with. But also policy is interesting to me and state policy is as well. Even if Ted Cruz's Take It down act goes through or the Shield act goes through and gets passed, it's still gonna come down to states. Federal prosecutors are likely not gonna have the time to prosecute these. Right. So state legislation is crucial, but really it just came from developing relationships with these women and trying to help them. And, and working in Virginia and working with the criminal justice reform advocates that I developed relationships with. And it just kind of evolved very naturally, but it's incredibly important.
- [47:27]
Sam
Yeah, yeah. I want to back up just a little bit because you said something interesting that I hear a lot from folks that I talk to about non consensual imagery being spread online. And the idea that the nature of this particular crime is that you're constantly being re traumatized. Like you're healing and then you're re traumatized because it starts spreading again. Something will happen, your name will come up again, it'll go viral again, totally out of your control. And it's not like you can just get off the Internet. You have to be using the Internet every day like the rest of us. And we've mentioned Charles a few times. He's this really great investigator who helps victims of non existential imagery get their stuff taken down. So what has that process been like to get stuff? You said initially that you had to figure out how to do like the copyright takedown process first. But it becomes so overwhelming, I'm sure just to have all of these images and links and. Yeah, if you could walk me through that.
- [48:33]
Susannah Gibson
Yeah. Charles reached out. I think the article in the Washington Post came out on September 11th. What a day. And all the days and then Charles and a few others. But Charles, I just had a really good sense of. Reached out to me the very next day and said, hey, like this is who I am. Let me help you. You. And you know, you don't know your entire sense of trust. Right. Is gone. And had already started getting avalanche of death threats and rape threats. And so you don't know who's reaching out to you to say they want to help you. Right. Like you don't know if they really are or not. And I'm so glad I kind of took a leap of faith and trusted him. He was instrumental in getting these taken down. I call him my guardian angel. He was wonderful. He monitored all the kind of chat rooms. So like 4chan and 8con or whatever, he monitored them all for me. And he came to me, he said, I have to tell you. And you can probably imagine this knowing him, but it's like to tell you I knew you were a really good politician because you have people informed defending you. Not all of them, some of them. He's like, I've never seen that before.
- [49:58]
Sam
That's wild.
- [50:01]
Susannah Gibson
But it made me laugh, actually, and I needed a laugh at the time. So, yeah, so there are people like Charles out there, but there are a lot of people who prey on victims of these crimes and will reach out. And a lot of women I've been helping have been victims of these people. Right. So they find these people to and they ask for compensation and they take their money and they do very little, if anything to help these victims. But yeah, every further sharing is just another re. Victimization. I'll give you an example about a month ago when I found out I was on this site that also has women who are very clearly being abused by the way in the pictures, but then also victims who are very clearly being trafficked. And a random person had reached out to me and told me never knew this person. They had a proton mail account. So who knows who they really are, but said basically, hey, your images and identifying information are on this one site. And I went and I've seen a lot of pirate pornography sites and this is one that is particularly horrifying to me. And the entire purpose of this site is to Ruin women. All bitches. Girl, can I, can I cuss on here?
- [51:32]
Sam
Oh yeah, okay.
- [51:33]
Susannah Gibson
All bitches cut sluts as soon as they turn 18 should be exposed to ruin them for the rest of their lives. And you have doctors and lawyers and businesswomen and students on there and dead women. Person who has been throwing mine up has a go file that you can request and he's actually doubled it in the past month or so. But he has a whole manifesto about why he exposes women. He has a whole manifesto about why he still exposes these dead women and posts their obituaries next to their non consensual images. It's particularly horrifying. But when I went to this site, then you have to try and get your images taken down. And they say they only do them for animal porn and child porn.
- [52:28]
Sam
Yep, they only take those. Yeah, those types, yeah.
- [52:35]
Susannah Gibson
I've had to go to it multiple times to check that my images were taken down to refile paperwork to check again. Right. So. And every time you see that and every time you read these comments by people who hate you or hate women that are so degrading and violent, it cuts you again and again and again. And you can't just leave them up there, Right. Because what do you do when someone applies for a job? You Google them. Right. And I believe that's probably why I've had difficulty finding a nurse practitioner job. Right. Because people unfortunately see this laundry list of news articles claiming that I'm an online sex worker funding my campaign by doing that. Right. All because the one, the original article was framed in a way that was misleading. But yeah, every single time hurts you. Again, it makes you scared. Again, it makes you look over your shoulder when you're walking down the street. Again, it makes you scared to answer the door. My house, when you asked what it was like when I was running, my house was swatted with my two young kids in it. Someone called for people who don't know what swatting is, is when someone calls in something that would prompt a heavy police response and or SWAT team, it's very dangerous. People die from swatting. And someone called the Richmond City police and said that my husband had shot me in the head and was holding my son hostage, who was tied with duct tape and was suicidal. And so you can imagine what kind of police response that triggered. But yeah, again, it happens to women. I've been helping women who. One, I'll give you an example, was a college student. Both of her parents had passed away. She was trying to work her Way through college she tried doing some online sex work, so some cam girl work and did it for about four months. Didn't really make much money and just felt like it wasn't for her. She had gotten recorded and it got uploaded to pirate sites. And she wakes up and she goes to these sites, tries to find them files, DMCA takedown requests, goes to school, then goes to her job, then gets home and goes to these sites again to file more takedown requests. And it's just this daily cycle of trauma. She's terrified to apply for a real job. She's now graduated from college, she's had people reach out and try and extort her. Because with reverse image search these days, easy to find who a woman or a person in a non consensual recording is. You reverse image search them and their contact information comes up. And so I think people really need to understand like this is not just oh, someone shared naked pictures. No, it is the violence that it creates and causes that is everlasting.
- [56:05]
Sam
Yeah. I think a lot of people who haven't experienced it directly or don't know someone, or haven't talked to someone who've experienced it directly have an idea, like you said, that it's just pictures. It's like it can't hurt you. It's just pictures of you on the Internet. You know, if you're not embarrassed of.
- [56:20]
Susannah Gibson
It, what are you?
- [56:21]
Sam
What's your problem? But it's the nature of the thing. It's the people, it's the types of people who are doing the posting or making compiling these collections and running these sites is the really, the really scary part. And just the determination that there is to ruin your life in a lot of these cases is really, really terrifying. Yeah. And it leaks out into the rest of your life and affects you every day going forward. What would you say to this Detroit question? But what would you say to. Because you're saying these things to women now, that's as part of your everyday, this is your job now. What would you say to women who are dealing with this, who say this sounds like me, this is something that I'm dealing with. How do I, how do I cope? What's my recourse? How do I move forward?
- [57:13]
Susannah Gibson
I would say call me or email me. You can email suzannamayownimage.org or infoyownimage.org but I really do mean that we've kind of created this network of survivors who are close knit who just having other people who understand like really understand that how Violent. This is, is really important and very healing. And so we have a survivor network. But then I think what I see a lot of is victims, you know, their friends and their family blame them and shame them and they internalize that. I'm so stupid. I should have known better. I shouldn't have, blah, blah, blah. I think again, like to those victims out there listening right now, like, it is not your fault that someone chooses to assault you. Right. It is their fault that they choose to attack you. It is never your fault, period. And I think really understanding that is important for them. There are lots of attorneys who say that they specialize in these particular crimes that don't and don't know what they are doing. So having trusted people to go to to pull down your dm, to pull down your images for you, like Charles, he's fantastic. Another plug for Charles. But he really is, he's helped a lot of women. I've sent his way as well. But filing DMCA takedown requests using pimize or Reverse image search is helpful to find your images and understanding how to navigate that DMCA takedown request removal request is important. It's usually in the bottom of sites. But I would say reach out to organizations like the Reclaim Coalition or my own image and we can give you names of trusted attorneys, trusted IT professionals and a lot more.
- [59:18]
Sam
Awesome. And we'll put some of those links in the show notes too so that people can get them easily.
- [59:25]
Susannah Gibson
I'm working on a very long list to put up on our website. So that easy for people who don't want to send an email or don't want to call or don't want to have a conversation about it to find out who we trust.
- [59:39]
Sam
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Even just googling some of this stuff is hard sometimes, so that'll be useful for folks.
- [59:48]
Susannah Gibson
Well, you know, you have to think about like me, right? Like I'm a white blonde hair, blue eyed middle class woman running for office. Right. And the like new little like rising star of the Virginia Democratic Party, all matters about how much you can fundraise. Like I'm so glad I'm not fundraising for a campaign right now. Yeah. But you know, even I, who then hired the best crisis and defamation attorney in Washington D.C. spent all my money by the way. Even I, with all of my connections had no idea and no one knew how to help me. And it's a really isolating experience. And I can only imagine for people who don't have the resources and connections that I have, how much more so than I felt. And so I just want people to understand like they're not alone. It is not their fault. And there are resources for you. You just need to know how to find them. So hopefully be having that, having those resources up on our website sometime in the next.
- [61:09]
Sam
Awesome. Well, I think that's a great place to leave it today. Thank you so much, Susannah. It's been great to talk to you. I really appreciate you going through your story for us today. I know like we said, it never really ends. So it's very much appreciated that you would replay it for us one more time here. But thank you.
- [61:31]
Susannah Gibson
Happy to talk about it. There's nothing I'd rather talk about or do. It's so incredibly important to help other people and, and change the way we understand these. So I appreciate you helping with me with that and for having me on.
- [61:44]
Sam
Yeah, absolutely. As a reminder, 404 is a journalist founded and supported company by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, go to 404 Media co. Another way to support us is leaving a five star review podcast. If you enjoyed it, that stuff really helps. This has been 44 media. We will see you again next time.