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Michael Weigel and William Eldridge both had the same idea on how to inflict emotional pain on women in their lives. They created fake Facebook profiles, populated them with naked and sexual images of the women and alerted people who know them to take a look.
Last week, both were sentenced to jail for that behavior. They were two of the first perps convicted under Minnesota's revenge porn statute, which makes the "nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images" a felony or gross misdemeanor.
The prosecutions of Weigel in Ramsey County and Eldridge in Faribault County demonstrate how the movement to stop "revenge porn" is ramping up in Minnesota and nationwide. The feds have run out of business some of the most loathsome revenge porn website operators. And advocates for victims have also focused on persuading the big internet companies to prohibit the practice and eliminate the images from search results.
"The past two years have seen some real strides," said Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and the author of the book, "Hate Crimes in Cyberspace."
Citron noted that Google and Bing now agree to keep "nonconsensual pornography" out of name searches, and Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Reddit ban the practice. "This allows victims to report content as abuse and if reports are legitimate (and not an anti-porn group) it will be removed," she said via e-mail.
But, she said, "there are still thousands of sites that traffic in so-called revenge porn." While victims can get it off Facebook and Google, other sites remain legally untouchable.
A criminal complaint describes how Eldridge set up a fake Facebook page that linked to a "blogspot" account with naked pictures of the woman. The victim learned about it when the link to the Facebook page was sent to the "fathers of her children."
The case was easy to crack. A co-worker of Eldridge at a Mason City, Iowa, pizza place told an investigator that Eldridge shared the photos with him and admitted posting them, according to the complaint.
It took five months before the law caught up with Eldridge. He spent 21 days in jail, and at his sentencing Monday, Eldridge, 27, of Mason City, received credit for time served and three years supervised probation.
As for what was online, at least as of March, Eldridge's victim "contacted Facebook and was able to have the Facebook page deleted, but the blogspot page remained," the complaint said.
Weigel also created a fake Facebook page, but in the name of his former partner's boyfriend, according to the criminal complaint. In December 2016, he uploaded 20 nude or seminude images of the victim, and invited others with friend requests from the impostor account, the complaint said.
When questioned by investigators, Weigel didn't deny posting the photos, but said they were already online, on a swingers' website, from when he and the woman were a couple, the complaint said.
After pleading guilty to one felony count, Weigel, 29, of Anoka, was sentenced on Tuesday to 120 days in jail, with 56 days credit for time served, and three years probation.
In a recent national survey by a nonprofit advocacy group, 8 percent of respondents said they had been victims of nonconsensual pornography. But Citron said even a few prosecutions has a "deterrent and educational impact."
"Have we gone as far as we need to? Not yet, but I will take the progress where I can."
Contact James Eli Shiffer at james.shiffer@startribune.com or 612-673-4116.
