BlogReflecting on 10 years: from seeking justice for myself to fighting for others

Our Chief of Staff, Norma Buster, reflects on her personal experience as a survivor of image-based sexual abuse, what’s changed in the past decade, and how she has found healing through her professional work at the firm, dedicated activism and reclaiming her power.

Ten years ago today, on a snowy Sunday in Nutley, New Jersey, I met Carrie Goldberg for the very first time.

As a 19-year-old college student living with my parents, by March 1, 2015, I was a shell of myself, completely depleted. I was in the midst of a months-long campaign of stalking and threats by my ex-boyfriend. After 2 years of dating, he didn’t take it well when I broke up with him and desperately did anything and everything to get my attention.  He showed up at my home and gym. He cozied up to my family members.  He lied that his mom and baby brother died.  At its peak, he faked his own suicide – recording what sounded like him shooting himself and leaving notes behind. This prompted a manhunt and I was advised to hide out at a secret location for days in case, as we correctly suspected, he wasn’t really dead and was likely homicidal.  The most lasting impact was him threatening and ultimately publishing my naked photos online

I felt utterly hopeless walking into the police station that day, even with an attorney by my side. I had already lost my first restraining order proceeding against my ex, which was what emboldened him to escalate his stalking and post my naked photos on the internet. And I had been turned away by police time and time again, even though New Jersey was one of 3 states at the time with a law criminalizing the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images. That cold snowy day, armed with an attorney, we once again were turned away – the cop rigidly said they couldn’t be sure he’d been hacked.  We explained we had proof of the threat preceding the publication.  But what if you impersonated him in that too?

It took Carrie finding a prosecutor in my county who had experience with tech and domestic violence cases, to get a criminal investigation underway to prove it was my ex-boyfriend who had posted my naked photos online. He pled guilty to invasion of privacy, the image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) charge in New Jersey, and on March 21, 2016, he was sentenced to five years of probation. Additionally, with my own attorney representing me, I was granted a lifetime restraining order in family court.

It was “over” then, but as I came to realize, I would never be the same. I related to Carrie, who became the lawyer she had needed when she went through something similar. I saw that she had taken this horrible, traumatic thing that happened to her with her own ex and turned it into a revolution. If the laws worked against her clients – victims in crises – then she’d do everything she could to change those laws. If there wasn’t anyone who understood these issues enough to fight for the most vulnerable, injured people, she’d step up and do it. She had to do it. And I realized I had to, too.

That’s why when, in the year after graduating from college, I saw that a position had opened up at Carrie’s firm for Client Relations Coordinator, I jumped on the opportunity. Today, as Chief of Staff at our firm, I’ve learned a lot over the past decade, both personally and professionally. Here are a few of my biggest takeaways.

1. Criminal laws on tech-facilitated violence have come a long way, but there are gaps.

I first heard of the term “revenge porn” when my mom found Carrie online, at a time when not many people were talking about it. I had seen salacious-sounding headlines covering “The Fappening” and Gamergate, but hadn’t ever heard of revenge porn. Today, we call it image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), because “revenge” implies the victim did something to deserve the abuse, and “porn” implies consent. But in 2015, I was learning there was a name for what I had been through, and that it is, in fact, a form of sexual violence. IBSA is meant to shame a victim into silence and submission. Learning that it was actually a crime made me realize I should not, and could not, be silenced.

We still don’t have a federal law criminalizing the nonconsensual dissemination of intimate images, but 49 states plus Washington D.C. have passed IBSA criminal laws. That’s a huge improvement from where we were in 2015! Still, many of these laws leave some victims unprotected. Some of the obstacles we often see include:

• Clauses in criminal law requiring proof that the offender had “intent to cause harm.” This means an offender could evade charges by arguing they were motivated by profit, voyeurism, social approval or other reasons. But a perpetrator’s intent doesn’t change the impact on the victim.
• Criminal laws lacking language on the threat to distribute intimate images. Threatening to release someone’s private images without their consent is a tactic sextorters and abusers use to control their victim, whether to obtain more explicit content, demand money, or to hold onto a relationship that has ended. It is torturous for the victim, who feels like they’re constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for many can be just as traumatizing as the actual dissemination. It was for me.
• Clauses in criminal law excluding victims whose content was initially shared in a “commercial setting.” Adult content creators who sell images/videos, and/or keep their content behind a paywall, should also be protected by IBSA laws when their content is shared without their consent. It’s a violation when content meant to be contained is disseminated beyond the boundaries established by the content creator. There may be heightened risk of nonconsensual dissemination, but that doesn’t mean sex workers shouldn’t have job protections too. Sexual abuse should not be a cost of doing business.

Additionally, even when there are adequate criminal laws, we hear from survivors every single day who face inexperienced and/or insensitive law enforcers as I did. With these laws must come training on how to actually enforce these laws, along with advocates made available to victims, trauma sensitivity training, and increased access to victims of crime compensation.

Beyond image-based sexual abuse, our firm sees on a daily basis the places where gaps in our laws impact survivors. For example, we need to fully decriminalize sex work so that an exchange of sex for money doesn’t put a victim of rape or other violence at risk of arrest if they seek help from police. We support the passage of Cecilia’s act for rights in the sex trades (S2513/A3251) in NY. Our firm has also led a push for reform of NY stalking laws, so that all victims of stalking can seek orders of protection in NY, regardless of the nature of the relationship (read more about the CREEP Act here).

Updates to criminal laws are important to stay up-to-date with what violence and abuse look like, especially in our digital age. For example, in 2023, NY updated its criminal law on image-based sexual abuse to include deepfaked (digitally forged) content. But the criminal justice system is not, and cannot be, the end-all-be-all.

2. Though we need criminal standards, we need to go beyond punishing individual offenders, and seek accountability from the powerful tech companies facilitating this violence.

I first learned about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 within my first week working at C.A. Goldberg, PLLC. We were discussing our client, who’s become a dear friend of mine, Matthew Herrick. His ex had used the hookup app Grindr to solicit 1100+ men to Matthew’s home and workplace in a period of under 6 weeks. Though Matthew and his friends and family members had reported the impersonating account over and over again, Grindr allowed Matthew’s ex to continue making abusive, impersonating profiles, manipulating Grindr’s geolocation feature to lure violent men to Matthew.

Grindr had the ability to stop the abuse, and they didn’t – in fact, Matthew’s ex primarily used Grindr because it was the one app that allowed him to weaponize it so easily. Our attorneys sued Grindr for releasing a dangerous product out into the stream of commerce, and the case – the first case to sue an app as a defective product — was dismissed because a judge said Grindr said it was immune from liability because of Section 230.

As individuals, if we suffer catastrophic injuries by a powerful company, we have the right to sue in civil court and prove that the defendant owes us financial damages. The tech industry is the only one (aside from the arms industry) that consistently evades liability for creating dangerous products. The heart of Section 230 consists of 26 words that say internet service providers should not be treated as the publisher of content provided by somebody else.   Over the last thirty years, courts have interpreted this so broadly it basically immunizes tech companies from facing legal liability for facilitating and profiting from the death and trauma of victims injured on their platforms across the world.

Learning about this in 2018, I was shocked. Why were we giving tech companies so much unchallenged power, and why was nobody else talking about it?!

In 2025, Section 230 is a hot topic. Our founder, Carrie, has testified to Congress several times over the years about the need for tech accountability, and over recent years, Congress has started discussing sunsetting Section 230. Several lawsuits against big tech companies have survived motions to dismiss, including our own against Omegle, which shut down in 2023.

It’s an uphill battle, as other cases get dismissed on arguments of Section 230. And the tech industry continues to pour more and more money into propaganda and lobbyists to convince people that Section 230 protects free speech on the internet, instead of what it actually does — protect tech companies from facing a courtroom.

3. Activism and advocacy for others is healing, and requires de-centering oneself while prioritizing wellbeing.

When we go through trauma, we can feel a loss of control. I know I did. For months, it felt like I was in a constant battle for agency over my life, with someone hellbent on taking it from me. By using my images, weaponizing my body and sexuality against me, and disseminating them without my consent, he did take away my agency in that moment.

Even with all my images down, and the stalking over, restraining order in full effect, it felt like my sense of autonomy was still under attack. The constant dread didn’t go away when he did. That’s the thing about PTSD; it makes you feel like you’re still in it.

As I’ve realized, it helps to make conscious decisions and enact my agency, putting it in action, reminding me it’s there, that my agency is still mine. Advocating for others became my way of turning trauma into purpose, transforming my anxious energy into tangible change.

I knew that there were other people who were going through what I had experienced. And many of them would never meet someone like Carrie Goldberg. I started researching laws on “revenge porn,” keeping up with the firm even before working here. Once I started as an employee, and began speaking with victims every single day, facilitating their way to an attorney who’d help them out of their crises, I began to see how healing the work would be for me.

When laws fail our clients, we fight to change those laws. At times, especially when rights are being taken away day by day, it can feel hopeless. But it helps to focus on the small progress we’re making. We must recognize our wins and those who have brought us to where we are today; it’s because of survivors and experts like Carrie Goldberg, Holly Jacobs, Mary Ann Franks, and others at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and more, that almost every state has a law criminalizing the nonconsensual dissemination of intimate images.

In recent years, I’ve represented our firm and myself as a survivor at global summits on image-based sexual abuse, and was appointed to the board of My Own Image, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing tech-facilitated sexual violence through public awareness, survivor support, and state legislation. The micro-level work I do at our firm—meeting with victims and overseeing operations and working with Carrie and the team on new initiatives and projects—in addition to the macro-level convening and activism outside of the office, fuels a fire within me in a way that nothing else can.  It’s also exciting to think that our huge impact litigations that change the law and pioneer new legal theories all begin with the initial intake meeting with my team and me.  So even the micro can be macro! I celebrate wins with my colleagues and our clients, and find community with others in the same fight.

I knew from the start that it would be important for me to de-center myself from this work, while using my lived experience to provide empathy to victims, and my expertise to activist spaces. This means listening and never assuming that I know what someone is experiencing or feeling. How I might react to something may be different from someone else, and depending on many factors of someone’s identity and life, the impact could vary greatly. So when I meet with victims, I ask a lot of questions. I express compassion without over-exerting my own perspective, while encouraging those I meet with that there is an after to all of this. While the work overall is healing for me –  my job is to escort clients into the beginning of their healing process.

With legislative efforts and when given a platform to share my opinions and knowledge, de-centering myself means listening to and amplifying the voices of those who are most often ignored. Trans, Black, sex worker, and other marginalized communities are often the most vulnerable to abuse and denied access to protection. When we center them in our activism, we all become safer.

Outside of finding healing through activism, I regularly find ways to reclaim my body, voice, and autonomy. Biweekly sessions with my sex-positive therapist are important to me, along with regular travel; I find enrichment and euphoria in seeing the world around me. It has helped too, to learn to discern for myself when I need a break; to build the self-awareness to recognize the start of burnout or a trigger.

Triggers do come, usually in my personal life, and there are still moments when I’m brought back to that time 10 years ago, when everything was out of my control. But it passes. And the more time that’s passed, the easier it’s become to recognize when it comes and let it go.

To survivors reading this, especially those who just went through it or you’re experiencing it now – know that it will be over soon. You deserve to fight for yourself, and then to heal, and the agency to decide what comes next. You have that agency, even if it feels like it’s been robbed from you. What you’ve experienced may have changed you, but now you can use it, channel it, and become the most powerful version of yourself you could’ve ever imagined. The numb, traumatized 19-year-old version of me couldn’t have dreamed of what life would look like in 2025. Your future you awaits you, too. And I promise it’s beyond your wildest dreams!

If you are experiencing image-based sexual abuse, stalking and/or harassment, please contact us here. We’re here for you when you’re ready to take the first step.