Rob Kardashian isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but his latest social media outburst involving Blac Chyna’s nude photos could land him in some serious trouble.
According to experts, Rob violated California’s revenge porn law and could face jail time.
According to NYDN, Lisa Bloom who won a revenge porn case involving actress Mischa Barton last month believes Kardashian’s actions violated a law that was instituted in California in 2013 that spells out what the court considers to be revenge porn after he shared three nude images apparently of his former fiancée to Instagram as he accused her of cheating on him.
“Revenge porn is illegal in CA and it certainly appears to me that Rob has violated this criminal law,” Bloom, who is based in Los Angeles, told the Daily News.
The aforementioned law lists the legal definition of revenge porn as a person having an image of an “intimate body part of another identifiable person, or an image of that person engaged in sexual intercourse, sodomy, oral copulation or masturbation.”
The person then must intentionally distribute the image despite there being an understanding that it be kept private, and do so with the intention of causing emotional distress. The distribution of the image then must lead to the other person’s emotional distress.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had not opened an investigation.
“This will be an interesting case to see how it plays out. Law enforcement can bring criminal charges on their own,” Elisa D’Amico, an expert on revenge porn cases at K&L Gates who also helps lead the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project in Miami, said.
“It’s more difficult to pursue without the victim’s cooperation, but with something like this, I imagine many eyes are looking already. It’s fairly high profile. A lot of lawyers are already up in arms,” she said.
If Chyna files a lawsuit and reaches a settlement or judgment, the amount could be sizable, D’Amico said.
“It’s certainly possible it could be in the millions, but I think it’s really hard to estimate damages at this juncture,” she said.
One revenge porn expert said she doubts law enforcement will pursue criminal charges due to widespread cynicism everything related to the Kardashian family is scripted to drive profits.
“There’s more of a question when talking about the Kardashians just because of their business plan,” lawyer Erica Johnstone told the Daily News.
“There are so many truly tragic cases out there, but this one is a little messy because of the people involved and how they monetize their bodies in celebrity culture,” Johnstone said. “They monetize abuse and harassment.”
But Bloom believes Kardashian’s actions fit this criteria, which is why jail could be on the table.
“The criminal penalty is up to six months in jail,” she said. “If she sued him for money damages, the amount she received would depend on the emotional distress she suffered. Given that he has a large social media following, if the jury was sympathetic to her, she could recover millions.”
Even though Chyna “liked” one of the nude photos Kardashian put on Instagram, that shouldn’t impact her case if she didn’t give her consent for the pictures to be released, attorney Carrie A. Goldberg told the Daily News.
“If the photos were posted without her consent then — no — her “liking” them absolutely does not diminish the fact that he violated her sexual privacy and has opened himself up to punishment in civil and/or criminal courts,” Goldberg said. “Liking should not be taken literally — she’s just communicating to him hey, I see what you did there, you a-hole.”
“What matters is whether he had her consent at the time he distributed them to his 9m Instagram followers,” she continued. “His words show he did not.”
Goldberg, a lawyer who focuses on online harassment, sexual assault and blackmail, agreed that jail could be a possibility for Kardashian and contended that nothing can justify someone sharing another person’s sexual privacy without permission.
“Kardashian’s conduct epitomizes ‘revenge porn’ — a jilted ex unable to handle rejection and jealousy in a mature way who aggresses by sexually exposing another individual,” she said.
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