A candidate for a high-profile state election in Virginia streamed more than a dozen times with her husband on the popular pornography website Chaturbate, a revelation that has since rocked the state election.
Susanna Gibson is running for a Virginia House of Delegates seat in the suburbs of Richmond. The videos show her and her husband, John David Gibson, having sex and asking viewers to provide tips before performing other sexual acts in front of the digital crowd.
Gibson has since responded by calling the public exposure of the videos “the worst gutter politics." She further accused her opponents of violating the state’s revenge porn laws by releasing the video.
“It won’t intimidate me and it won’t silence me,” the candidate said. “My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they’re willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up.”
Virginia state laws stipulate that it is a Class 1 misdemeanor to “maliciously” spread sexual or nude images of someone to “coerce, harass, or intimidate.”
Daniel P. Watkins, a lawyer working for Gibson, said they “are working closely with state and federal law enforcement” on the issue. When asked how Gibson could have an expectation of privacy while streaming to a public website, Watkins pointed to a Virginia Court of Appeals ruling that found it was unlawful for a man to secretly record his girlfriend during a consensual sexual encounter, saying the consent to be recorded is not the same as consent to being seen.
Chaturbate streams broadcast live but are often recorded and archived on other sites, which appears to be what happened in Gibson’s case.