A 31-year-old man in Portland, Oregon is the first person to be convicted and sentenced under Oregon’s new revenge porn law. Benjamin Barber will serve six months in jail after being charged with five counts of unlawful dissemination of an intimate image.
Barber was arrested in July. A person he had formerly had an intimate relationship with filed the report with police after claiming Barber posted an explicit video of the two of them to multiple websites without permission.
Barber feels he was wrongly convicted. He claims his ex originally used the footage to blackmail him, he owns the copyright for the video, and that the judge in his case withheld evidence and treated him unfairly.
Barber also interrupted the reporter interviewing the police chief about the case in order to try to explain himself. When KOIN 6 reporter Emily Sinovic tries to argue that his explanation sounds creepy, Barber gets defensive:
“I understand people are going to think I look creepy. I have this blown out eye.”
Sinovic replies that she was talking about the way he was acting, not the way he looked. Barber continues:
“Have you never texted someone, have you ever posted any images of yourself to someone? Does that make you creepy? Is it creepy to post commercial pornography? Is every porn star a creep?”
After an uncomfortable silence, Barber claims that the Oregon law is “literally unconstitutional.” He also plans to sue the state of Oregon for infringing on his First Amendment rights.
Revenge porn, the act of publishing explicit images of someone without their consent, has become an increasingly large problem. Angry exes often post private images in order to hurt someone in their job, social life, or current relationship, or they blackmail them in order to keep the images private.
Hopefully, more states follow Oregon’s lead and adopt stricter punishments for revenge porn.
Watch below to see the report on the conviction, including Barber’s strange defense of himself:
Featured Image via KOIN 6 News
