MINNEAPOLIS — "Some people call this electronic assault, some digital exploitation, others call it revenge porn," Katie Hill said in her resignation video uploaded to YouTube. "As a victim of it, I call it one of the worst things we can do to our sisters and our daughters."
With the resignation of Hill, the topic of revenge porn is back in our atmosphere. In California, revenge porn has been illegal since 2014. Minnesota became the 33rd state to criminalize the "non-consensual dissemination of private sexual images" in 2016.
Behind that 2016 effort stood MN House Representative John Lesch. Lesch authored the bill. He said the death of 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons from Nova Scotia, Canada was fresh in his mind.
"Apparently [she] got with a member of the football team at a party, wanting to be popular and accepted and he took photos of it and distributed around the school," Lesch said. "And she got taunted with names like 'slut' and 'whore' for a long time before she finally decided to kill herself."
Lesch said Parson's death as well as a 2013 case out of Isanti County led him to draft the bill. Timothy Turner was convicted in Isanti County of criminal defamation after posting sexual ads online pretending to be his ex-girlfriend.
"She was getting creepy guys calling her all the time based on the fact that he surreptitiously invited sexual advances, put her cellphone on there," he said. "And he did it with her teenage daughter as well so she was getting creepy texts and that was the Minnesota case that really spurred us to take action."
It's been three years since the bill passed but Lesch said he still hears about it regularly.
"It was a pretty heavy lift but we did it," he said. "A month doesn't go by I don't hear from someone who thanks me for doing that."
He added that he's hoping the word will continue to spread about this law.
"It's going around to the young men in Minnesota that you could go to jail if you do this," he added. "And you will have a criminal conviction akin to a domestic assault if you do this."
Lesch emphasized that over the past few years he has also heard from male revenge porn victims.
As for Hill, she has mentioned to several other media outlets that she will be pursuing legal action, potentially against the outlets that published her photos.