The Trauma Of Having Private Sex Images Posted Publicly Online

After going through a “messy breakup” with her boyfriend in 2018, Spring Cooper blocked him from her Tumblr account. The next day, nude pictures of her were posted online along with her name. Then came explicit videos of her, plus her social media information and contact details.

She was inundated with thousands of lewd messages, some sent to her work email address. Cooper says she was convinced her ex-boyfriend Ryan Broems was doing the posting and decided she would try to use a new New York City “revenge porn law” against him.

But to gather evidence of the material being posted online for her case, she was forced to engage with the very people who were leering at the naked images of her.

“A new post would go up, and I would get a creepy message from some random jerk and then I would have to cajole this person into telling me where he saw it so that I could go try to get it taken down,” she tells A&E Crime and Investigation.

Each time a message popped into her inbox, the pain renewed—and she felt so alone. 

“If someone had come up to me on the train platform and pulled my clothes off, other people would run up and help me,” Cooper says. “But when I'm there on the platform and it's happening to me through the internet, nobody could help me until I reached out and asked for support.” 

For Cooper, that support came from friends and her civil case lawyer Daniel Szalkiewicz.

Cooper, an associate professor of public health at CUNY School of Public Health, was the first victim to press charges under the city law. She won that case, plus a lawsuit against Broems. The civil case made headlines in 2024 for its $30 million jury award, though Cooper says she has not yet received any of the money. 

Broems in 2021 pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of disclosure of an intimate image and received a no-jail sentence of 26 weeks attending a program for abusive partners, the New York Post reported, citing a transcript of the plea hearing. 

Cooper tells A&E Crime + Investigation her story.

I received a message from a Tumblr account saying, “I have naked photos of you if you don't agree to be my personal ‘webslut’—which means sending me naked photos whenever I demand them and giving me all the details of your sex life—then I'm going to post these photos with your contact details on my Tumblr page.” I had no idea who this threat was from, but I had just gone through this messy breakup with my ex, and I blocked him the day before. I had some suspicion that it could be him, but I also didn't think my ex would do that to me. This was somebody I had loved and dated for a year. Instead of agreeing to what the message said, I blocked the messenger. 

The next day, my friends and I were all taking turns watching the Tumblr page, and at around 11 a.m., a couple of nude photos of me went up with my name. One of my friend's boyfriends was on duty watching the page, and he screenshotted it and sent it to me immediately. 

I was at my house at the time. I sat down on the bed, heavy— I almost fell—and just started sobbing. There was this real feeling of  “I want to do harm to you.” That was so scary. There's this idea that some people have, “Oh, it's just digital. A cyber sexual assault is not the same as something that happens in person.” And it's not true. It has the same emotional impacts as any other type of sexual assault. And there is this stripping away of this sense of privacy that you didn't even know you were enjoying. You don't even realize that you had this feeling of being safe until it's totally gone. I had this feeling like my world was over. Because the internet is forever, and [the images are] everywhere; anyone can have them, it doesn't matter if those photos have only been up for a second. Who knows how many people have already downloaded them? 

When I saw the first images, I knew only my ex had them, so I knew immediately that it was him behind that posting. I went to get an order of protection [from family court] that afternoon. I thought that that would solve the problem, that he wouldn’t dare go against an order of protection. I thought, now I'm safe.

The order of protection wasn't even given to him for weeks because he was evading it. Officials were told he’d moved out of the state, so they stopped trying to deliver it. Meanwhile, my ex is emailing me, and I have information where I know he's still in the city. He tried to retaliate and get an order of protection against me, which was, oddly enough, delivered to me way before he ever got one delivered to him, but [the one against me] was thrown out because there was no basis for it.

About a week and a half after that first post went up, when I got some more threats [and pictures] through an unknown Facebook account. The fear that I experienced was so intense that I decided to go to the police. I filed charges [under the new “revenge porn” law]. And then every time a new post went up that had new content in it, I filed another police report. It had to be new content for me to know that he was behind it, otherwise it could have been reposted by anybody at that point. I believe I filed 12 unique police reports.

A friend started going with me [to file] because I couldn't go through that alone. One officer tried to take a picture of an image with his own phone. 

I felt we needed people to stand up on this issue. As a professor, I do have more [job] protection than most people do. But I did not yet have tenure at that time, so I was nervous that I might not get rehired, or that if I chose to go to another institution and apply for a job, that someone might Google me, see the stories and decide they didn't want to offer me a job. I felt like there were some risks for me, but also that I was in a better position to stand up than many other people.

Yes. I was only going to file criminal charges at first, but it was a brand new law, and the DA did not know how to investigate it. They didn't know how to find details out about who was behind the post and how to confirm all this information, and they were really struggling. One of my friends researched lawyers, found Daniel, and said I should reach out to him. Daniel was willing to work with me on a fee structure, since it was the first case and he wanted to be a part of it. He emphasized the importance of the civil case, saying that these big headlines are one of the things that actually prevents other people from committing the crime. He thought that there was a very important advocacy piece to this case. Daniel was also able to teach the DAs a lot about how to research this crime, which was why I actually won my criminal case.

It was in December of 2021 that we finally finished the criminal court case because COVID happened, and there were other things that slowed the case down—my ex wouldn't show up, or his lawyer wouldn't show up. I don’t believe jail is reparative. So, in December 2021, I said, “We have all this evidence. If you plead guilty, I’ll offer a year-long course for abusers that has shown reduced reticence.” And so, we offered him that and he accepted. 

Because he said that he was guilty of doing these things [in the criminal trial], that meant he was already guilty for the civil case. So, we had to have the day in court to actually present the whole case and assess damages. We finally did that in February 2024, so it was six years after everything started.

Daniel told me he was going to ask for $10 million and I said, “That seems like such a high number. I don't want them to laugh at us and think we're crazy. Don't ask for that.” And then, on the day, Daniel answered $20 million [when asked about damages]. Then the jury deliberated for over an hour, and they said $30 million. I couldn't believe it. A juror we ran into outside the courthouse said that the reason they deliberated so long was because many people on the jury wanted to pay more. That was the lowest number that they finally could settle on. 

I think the reason the number was so high was that it was the first case in New York City, and they wanted to set a really strong precedent. They wanted to send a message to anyone who might think this crime is acceptable.

It’s more than symbolic. It's a precedent, and the precedent that carries real weight. I have not received any money at this point. I don't know if I will ever get any money from him, and that’s not even the reason I pressed the civil charges. I felt once the court case was over, the real healing could start, because this felt like an open wound for six years. The jury’s decision spring-loaded me into this healing process. I had been heard and understood. 

It was like a full-time job. I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to keep up with getting enough publications and grants out, that I wasn't producing enough [at work] because of how much time I had to spend on this. I sought all types of therapy too. For the six years, from start to court date, [my therapy] cost $41,650.

When it first became big news in 2018, it was very scary. People from high school who I hadn't talked to in years reached out to me about this extremely personal content, and then I also had people reaching out to me, thanking me for doing this. At work, no one ever brought it up to me ever—and that was weird, too. And all this time it was all “alleged.”

Then, in 2024, when I won $30 million, there was tons of media coverage, and everybody was so proud of me, but they also thought I was a millionaire. I’d have people ask me out to dinner and then expect me to pay for them. 

Document everything immediately. Screenshotting is the most important thing to do. Before you do anything else—before you even cry, before you call someone—gather the evidence. Unfortunately, it's your responsibility to do that, and the faster you get that done, the better. In the advent of deepfakes, you don’t even have to have ever taken a nude photo to be a victim of this crime and feel its harmful effects. Next, reach out to people you trust for support. There are online support groups, too. There are so many people going through this, even though so many people are still afraid to talk about it. Know that you're not alone.