Kaitlyn Cannon was fresh out of Penn State and embarking on what she thought was a promising career in television news when a text message in March 2018 changed her life.
An old friend received nightmarish news: Cannon’s intimate photos had appeared on a site notorious for selling non-consensual porn (or “revenge p0rn”).
Cannon sent the photos to an old friend when she was in college and they were still together. Now, she’s won a lawsuit in New Jersey against her high school math teacher after an investigation found the nude photos were posted from his private IP address.
On Friday, an Ocean County jury found that Christopher Doyle, Cannon’s teacher at Wall High School in New Jersey, shared 14 nude and semi-naked selfies of her online. She still doesn’t know how he got her.
“I’m shocked and confused and hope it’s not true,” Cannon testified Wednesday in Ocean County Superior Court.
Some of the photos show her face, all of which show her unique spelling of her first name, initials and small South Jersey hometown. That explains why Cannon has received more than 10 creepy Facebook requests from men across the state in the past few weeks. That, she said, also explains why her parents and grandmother answered the phone quickly and heard the men’s heavy breathing and rude conversation.
That was scary for Cannon, 29, but that fear turned to anger when her lawyers investigated and found the photos were linked to Doyle’s IP address. Doyle used to teach her math, while her younger sister trained in tennis.
“I don’t think anyone in my life would do something like that,” Cannon sobbed on the witness stand last Wednesday. “He was my old teacher. He shouldn’t see me that way.”
After five years of nightmares, panic attacks, the loss of friends and what she called hundreds of hours of therapy, a jury of four women and three men awarded Cannon $10,000 in damages for violating her privacy.
Doyle was found to have violated New Jersey’s non-consensual pornography law and laws prohibiting the public disclosure of private facts.
Cannon’s attorney, Cali P. Madia, told Insider that the jury wasn’t convinced when Doyle said in court that he didn’t remember posting the photos.
Doyle’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment on Monday and declined to comment on Doyle’s defense in court last week.
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