{"id":1148270,"date":"2023-07-22T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-22T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/production.public.theintercept.cloud\/?p=436616"},"modified":"2023-07-22T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-22T10:00:00","slug":"years-after-metoo-defamation-cases-increasingly-target-victims-who-cant-afford-to-speak-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/07\/22\/years-after-metoo-defamation-cases-increasingly-target-victims-who-cant-afford-to-speak-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Years After #MeToo, Defamation Cases Increasingly Target Victims Who Can\u2019t Afford to Speak Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Elise Aubuchon felt<\/span> she owed it to other women to speak out. It was 2020, and #MeToo had prompted countless people to publicly expose those who had harassed and abused them. Years after she says she was raped, and once she realized the police weren\u2019t going to pursue her case, she decided to make a public post on Facebook naming the alleged rapist. \u201cMY VOICE WILL BE HEARD,\u201d she wrote. \u201cTHIS IS FOR ALL THE VICTIMS OF THIS SICK MAN!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wasn\u2019t planning to pursue legal action; she just wanted to warn others. Instead, it was the man she accused who sued her. Almost immediately after she put up her post, he sent her a letter threatening to sue her for defamation if she didn\u2019t take it down. She refused. She hoped it was just an empty threat. But less than three weeks later, he filed a defamation lawsuit against her, according to court records, and demanded $25,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI felt defeated,\u201d she told The Intercept. She was making $11 an hour and had no resources to fight him off; he already had a lawyer. She scrambled to find one of her own, mining the comments on her Facebook post for people to talk to. When she contacted one, she asked what she could do with little to no money. \u201cIt was extremely stressful,\u201d she said, not knowing if she would be able to come up with the funds to defend herself. \u201cIt\u2019s really scary. And it just feels like a second attack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the five years since the start of the #MeToo movement, a quiet but effective legal backlash has swept over those who spoke out about sexual harassment and abuse. The accused have turned around and sued their accusers, effectively silencing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This silencing is even more acute in the aftermath of the libel judgement in Johnny Depp\u2019s case against Amber Heard, where a jury found that her allegations of abuse in an op-ed \u2014 an op-ed that didn\u2019t actually name him \u2014 were false. Experts warned<\/a> that anti-feminist groups were mobilizing to bring defamation suits and that it could make survivors of sexual violence and domestic abuse fearful to come forward. Heard\u2019s own team said<\/a> the outcome would have a \u201cchilling effect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But most victims aren\u2019t Hollywood actresses. These cases are mostly being brought against people with few resources, \u201cwho are much more ordinary folks: people who are low-paid workers, people who are young, people who are absolutely not in the spotlight,\u201d said Jennifer Mondino, director of the TIME\u2019S UP Legal Defense Fund, which eventually supported Aubuchon with a grant for legal fees. \u201cFor those people it is all the more intimidating to be faced with the possibility of being sued.\u201d Those without the resources to fight these lawsuits off may feel forced to recant their accusations, while the potential of being sued for defamation after speaking out is likely keeping others silent in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the TIME\u2019S UP Legal Defense Fund was launched in 2018 to provide funding and legal support to low-wage and low-income people who have experienced sexual abuse at work, it has awarded 62 grants that directly deal with a victim who was sued for defamation, making up nearly 20 percent of its work over its existence, according to data shared with The Intercept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That figure is certainly an undercount of how many people it has helped who have faced defamation lawsuits, because the thousands of cases where the defendants were connected to an attorney but not given funding aren\u2019t included, nor are those who were sued for defamation after being awarded funding. Since its inception in January 2018, the fund has given over $13 million to victims of workplace harassment to cover attorneys\u2019 fees and fund public relations support. An individual case can receive anywhere from a few thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands for ongoing litigation.<\/p>\n\n\n Retaliation is a<\/span> common experience for people who speak up about sexual harassment. But \u201cincreasingly we are seeing defamation suits be a way that people are retaliated against,\u201d Mondino said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kenneth White, a partner at law firm Brown White & Osborn, used to get only the occasional request for help with a defamation case after writing and speaking frequently about such cases. \u201cOver the last, I would say, five years I really saw a significant increase in the number of these that had to do with women being threatened for speaking or writing about some form of abuse,\u201d he said. Being labeled as a harasser or rapist carries more reputational damage than it used to, thanks to #MeToo. This is a way for abusers to try to claw back that lost status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stephanie Holt, deputy director of operations at the Victim Rights Law Center, has seen the same. Five years ago, it was \u201cpretty rare\u201d to even get a letter threatening defamation, she said. But now she\u2019s getting many calls from people who have gotten a letter demanding that they take down a post or stop speaking about what happened to them, or face a lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to her legal complaint, which she filed in response to the defamation lawsuit, Aubuchon was raped at work only a few days on the job. At age 18, she had worked a number of low-paid positions \u2014 from preschool assistant teacher to hair salon receptionist \u2014 never making more than $11 an hour, so in the summer of 2018, she took a server job at a strip club to earn better pay. That day, a regular customer who frequently bought everyone drinks came into the club. Even though she was underage, she claimed her manager encouraged her to drink alcohol offered by customers, so she did. She quickly felt \u201creally dizzy,\u201d she said, and suspects that she may have been drugged. According to the complaint, that\u2019s when her manager told her to come to a \u201csecluded\u201d room and penetrated her with his penis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The manager has said that the sex was consensual and denied the other allegations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A co-worker gave Aubuchon a baby wipe to clean herself up and she went home, according to her complaint. She never returned to work, and she claimed that she wasn\u2019t paid for any of the days she worked. The next day, she decided to report what had happened to her to the police and submitted to a rape kit. She was told the kit would come back in eight to 12 weeks, she told The Intercept. But she kept calling and kept being told it hadn\u2019t come back. When she called back a year later, she was told it had come back negative for evidence of sexual activity and she says she was told there was nothing the police could do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n