Editor’s note: This is the first story in a two-part series on revenge porn in Montana, and work to provide recourse for victims.

This week, Montana Fourth Judicial District Court granted a Missoula woman’s motion, allowing the forensic review of a laptop used by her ex-husband to distribute naked photos of her without her consent.

The legal relief came too late, though, to prevent irreparable damage.

Montana has no law that criminalizes the distribution of sexually graphic photos of another person without their consent, also known as image abuse, non-consensual pornography or revenge porn.

Victims like Kristine Hamill can only fight for possession of the photos, after they’re already on the Internet.

Hamill, a retired Missoula County detention officer, filed for an order of protection and a motion to receive the laptop after discovering that her former husband distributed the sexual and revealing photos without her consent on multiple pornography websites and to strangers over email, according to court documents.

She believes that he’s been sending photos of her for the past 12 years, throughout their marriage. Hamill contacted Missoula Current, in the hope that a story about her case would help change state law and raise local awareness of revenge porn.

According to Hamill’s affidavit, she discovered that her ex-husband was distributing her photos without consent in April 2018. Some photos were ones she allowed him to take earlier in the marriage, while others she had no recollection of being taken.

She left her home with her 11-year-old daughter and reported her former husband to the Missoula City Police Department. A warrant was issued in May to collect his phone, hard drive and laptop. The laptop was purchased by both Hamill and her ex-husband.

According to court documents, after being searched by the Montana State Crime Lab, more photos were uncovered that were taken over a year ago, making it difficult to hold her ex-husband criminally liable for his actions in Montana.

However, Hamill was granted a permanent restraining order for her and her daughter.

“He put us at risk,” she said.

With her photos still floating around the Internet, Hamill said the only way to remove her photos from websites would be to copyright the images on the laptop.

“The only way I’m going to be able to get those photos down off some of those sites, is to copyright them. They’ll always be out there, no matter if I get them off because people copy them,” she said in an interview. “Even if they change one little thing about the picture, like the size or the color, then it’s hard to find.”

Hamill filed a reply brief last week in support of a previous motion for release of the laptop, and stated that a forensic review of its contents would take place to remove photos from the Internet and recover other deleted photos.

Her ex-husband filed a motion as well, saying she had all the photos and didn’t need a forensic review of the laptop.

Hamill requested that her former husband pay for the review; that motion was granted as well this week.

While she awaits the forensic review, Hamill is grappling with the reality of all that's happened. After living with friends and family for seven months, Hamill and her daughter moved into a new home in October.

She has spent hours on websites searching for the photos and now lives in fear of being watched, keeping her from using fitting rooms and sometimes staying in hotels.

“I would have never thought in a million years that my husband would be sharing this,” Hamill said. “He’s privately emailing [photos] to other men. So since then, I cut my hair, I changed my hair color, because I don’t know.”

However, Hamill has been driven to educate herself and others about her experience, and teamed up with a nonprofit in Ohio that helps victims of non-consensual pornography or revenge porn.

Katelyn Bowden, founder and CEO of Battling Against Demeaning & Abusive Selfie Sharing, or BADASS, said the nonprofit has helped more than 1,000 people and has aided in the removal of over 10,000 images since it started a year ago.

About 1 in 25 people will experience image abuse or revenge porn in the United States, she said. Forty states have some sort of law that addresses it as a crime. Montana is not one of them.

“Especially in places where there aren’t laws to deter the behavior, I mean these are places that have thriving message boards where people trade these images like kids trade Pokémon cards,” Bowden said.

In some states, lawyers must prove malicious intent of the distributor, while in others, the photos must have only been sent by an ex-partner. Some offer misdemeanor offenses while other state laws define it as a felony.

In states like New Jersey, the law is strong and a civil suit can be filed for defamation against distributors of the images.

“They have simply a revenge porn civil suit where there is monetary compensation, and that’s a great consequence,” Bowden said. “For most victims, it isn’t even about the money, it’s about getting some kind of justice and hitting them where it hurts, which is their wallet. Right now, there are some great laws, and there are some not so great ones.”

Bowden had her own experience with image abuse when she worked as a bartender in Ohio and someone stole her ex-partner’s phone and shared explicit photos. The organization is currently working to pass an image abuse law in Ohio.

“Before this happened to me, I had no idea that this was even a thing,” she said. “I thought that these nude leaks were only coming from celebrities. I didn’t think anybody was going to want to see a 30-year-old bartender naked, and it was very, very eye-opening once I saw how huge this entire subculture is.”

During the 2017 legislative session, House Bill 129 sought to amend Montana’s sexual assault laws, criminalizing the distribution of intimate images against someone’s consent.

However, the Senate Judiciary Committee removed that portion of the bill, so it no longer protected people who took images of themselves and sent them to an intimate partner, expecting the images would remain private.

Hamill said that “selfie senders” shouldn’t be blamed for their photos being distributed.

“I still think that’s wrong. It’s like saying if a girl wears a skirt to a party and gets raped, she deserves it because she wore a skirt,” she said. “Just because you take a photo, privately, and share it with your spouse or your boyfriend or your significant other, does not mean that you deserve to have it plastered all over the place.”

The 2017 bill, sponsored by Rep. Ellie Hill Smith, D-Missoula, failed on a 0-50 vote in the Senate, with supporters agreeing that the amended version of the bill strayed too far from its original intent.

Since then, there has been little talk about introducing another bill, but Hamill hopes she can be a catalyst for change and an advocate for those who have similar experiences.

Having been contacted by four other victims in Missoula, she hopes that raising awareness and pushing for state and city officials to support bills addressing image abuse can help future victims.

“It will never help me. I will never get justice. It’s over for me, but I want to make sure that the next person and his next victim, because there will be another one, will have something to lean back on. People need to be educated that this is happening,” Hamill said.

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