Ohio Police Investigating Revenge Porn Site: 190 Photos Of Local Women Being Traded

Law enforcement in Marion, Ohio, launched an investigation into reports of explicit photos of local women being uploaded to a notorious revenge porn site without their consent.

Marion Police Department chief Jay McDonald said they are currently trying to figure out who posted the photos to the site, local newspaper Marion Star first reported.

McDonald said the department is also trying to determine what legal actions can be taken against anyone who has been promoting the website, which was not named in the report to respect the privacy of the victims.

Police were alerted of the revenge porn website and the photos after Natalie Steven, of Marion, warned people on social media Tuesday that sensitive images of local women were being shared on the site.

Steven said that there were roughly 190 photos of Marion women uploaded to the site, with some being photos of the women naked while others were taken from their social media accounts, according to Marion Star.

According to Steven, users of the website would describe new nude images as "wins," and other users would request more "wins" of the same person. Users then allegedly used these images to trade with other users for more similar content.

Steven first discovered the site from a viral video on TikTok and has been contacting victims. She said nearly all of the victims were clueless about the uploads, and none had given their consent for the photos to be posted or shared.

Another Marion resident, Kaitlyn McKinniss, also said she has been notifying victims since discovering the site. She said the youngest of the victims was around 17 years old, while the oldest has been 30.

Like Steven, McKinniss also confirmed from the victims that nearly all of them were unaware of the posts and that they did not give consent to anyone for them to be shared.

According to McKinniss, some of the victims were still minors in the photos, although she said many of them are now in their 20s. While this is technically child pornography for both the sender and the receiver of the naked photos, police said they have no intention of punishing the victims.

"We certainly are much more concerned about the people spreading it than the person whose picture has been taken in it," police chief McDonald explained.

The police chief also noted how the anonymity of the website is a challenge for local law enforcement as he said they are designed to deter officers from discovering the identities of users. According to McDonald, due to the difficulty, it was rare for felony charges to come out of cases like this.

McDonald said the biggest step one can take in being safe with these kinds of photos is to just not take them or send them.

"And, you know, there have been cases nationwide where young kids have committed suicide over these things," McDonald said. "So it's serious. We don't want to tell people that sharing them is okay. We're trying to discourage the sharing of them."

McKinniss, however, explained that sending other people photos was not the only way for them to be acquired by malicious parties. One of the victims told her she believes her compromised Snapchat account may have been the source of her uploaded photos, although it was unclear how they made it to the website.

The original URL for the reported site is no longer accessible. McDonald said it was unclear if the site was actually down or if it was migrated to a new server.

Local authorities in Rio Grande Valley, Texas, encountered the same challenges in March when they received reports of local women being targeted by revenge porn sites, Valley Central previously reported.

Both Ohio and Texas consider revenge porn a crime.