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High-school cheerleader, 17-year-old Madi Hime, has gone public on becoming a victim of cyber harassment after the mother of one of her rivals allegedly sent "deep fake" videos and photos to her coach to have the girl booted out of the team.
Speaking on Good Morning America, Hime told how stunned she had been when her coach from the cheer squad showed her the "altered" video of her vaping, which is an apparent violation of team rules.
“I went in the car and started crying and was like, ‘That’s not me in the video'. I thought if I said it, no one would believe me because obviously, there’s proof, there’s a video – but obviously that video was manipulated,” the teenager explained.
On top of that, it was reported that some "doctored" images showed the cheerleader naked and drinking.
Hime and her mother decided to pursue a criminal probe and contacted police.
“I told her ‘I will call the police’ because I wanted her to know that’s how much I believed her,” Hime’s mother told Good Morning America.
Police say that a Pennsylvanian woman, Raffaela Spone, is believed to be behind the "deep fake" videos of her daughter's cheerleading rivals. Although Spone denies any wrongdoing, she has been charged with three counts, each of cyber harassment of a child and harassment. There's no indication her teenage daughter was aware of what her mother was doing.