A Virginia Democrat who was featured in more than a dozen video streams of her and her husband having sex online for "tips" is speaking out, claiming to be a victim of an invasion of privacy by Republican operatives.
In a recent interview with Politico, former Virginia House of Delegates candidate Susanna Gibson spoke about how she felt about the explicit videos surfacing ahead of her election loss earlier this year.
"It is a feeling that I would not wish on my worst enemy," the Democrat, nurse practitioner and mother of two, told the outlet.
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Gibson made waves in September after archived livestream videos of her having sex with her husband resurfaced and circulated online.
The Washington Post broke the story, reporting that the couple solicited payments from viewers in exchange for specific acts. The Post headlined the story: "Va. Dem. House candidate performed sex online with husband for tips."
Gibson and her husband were featured in more than a dozen videos that were archived on a site called Chaturbate in September 2022, which is after she officially entered the race for delegate, and the most recent videos were archived on Sept. 30, 2022.
Once news broke and Republican operatives shared the story ahead of election day, Gibson insisted that she was the victim of "an illegal invasion of my privacy designed to humiliate me and my family." She continued to stay in the race, until she lost.
In her recent interview with Politico, Gibson maintained that she was the victim of a media hit job and illegal distribution scheme of the videos.
Mentioning the Post’s story from September, she said, "My entire life was rocked on Sept. 11, when the article ran. It ran, implying that I performed sex acts online with my husband for money. It was really written based on this Dropbox file that self-described Republican operatives shopped around."
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Gibson spoke to Politico about feeling blindsided: "They had found these videos on the dark web and shopped them around to various news outlets. I didn’t have any idea that there were ever videos of me that had been made and uploaded to multiple sites," she said.
Gibson added, "When you find out that there are sexually explicit videos of you online, especially by being contacted by national reporters — it is a feeling that I would not wish on my worst enemy."
As far as her claims of the videos being spread illegally, she said, "Content that is initially made in a consensual context, which is then distributed in a non-consensual context digitally, is a crime."
Speaking of her actions versus Republicans spreading info about her explicit content, she opined, "Choosing to share content, online or in whatever medium, with select people with the understanding that it will disappear and can only be seen by those present at the time — when we’re talking live streaming, webcamming and Skype — that is a far cry from consenting for that content to be recorded and then broadly disseminated. And there is case law precedent confirming this."
She also told the outlet, "I think what people do in their private lives, digitally — if it is legal, it is consensual and has no bearing on their ability to do their jobs — I think there should be a barrier. I think that it is unethical to make people’s private lives — especially their sexual private lives — public and part of how we think about them and their ability to do their jobs and make positive contributions to their communities."
Gibson also warned that other women will soon be victims of the same sort of scrutiny, saying, "I think this is going to continue to happen as millennials age into running for office. There was a 2014 study conducted by McAfee that said or showed that 90 percent of millennial women have taken nude photos at some point."
