Every time she meets you, Nikki Rettelle wonders if you’ve seen her naked.
Nude photos of her dot the Internet, still popping up years after an ex-boyfriend posted them.
Rettelle is a victim of revenge porn, a kind of online harassment that advocacy groups refer to as “non-consensual pornography.”
Rettelle, 34, says her naked pictures have been on hundreds of websites. It started with a man she sarcastically calls “Mr. Wonderful.” The two dated briefly until Rettelle noticed an LED light beaming from a pen-holder in his room.
“Something compelled me to unscrew it, and as soon as it opened up… my world started spinning,” she recalls. Inside she found a memory card filled with countless images of herself — ranging from her watching TV to changing her clothes.
It turned out the pen-holder was one of many cameras that had been collecting her private moments. Mr. Wonderful had also planted cameras at her home.
It didn’t dawn on me that people did that,” Rettelle said.
Those images ended up on sites devoted to revenge porn. In Retelle’s case, “Mr. Wonderful” paired her naked images with her full name and birthday along with phone numbers and addresses he believed were hers.
CNNMoney examined restraining orders, emails with the San Diego District Attorney, communications between Rettelle and Mr. Wonderful, and records of websites where her photos had appeared to verify Rettelle’s story.
“I would stay up almost all night, every night, just in a little cave, just searching more and finding more and more,” she recalls.
Situations like this happen more than you’d think.
In Chicago, a woman who asked to be called “Jane” recounts her nightmare. Pictures and videos taken on her honeymoon were posted online by her ex-husband. She says one video has been viewed over a million times.
