Man accused of sending sexually explicit pics of his estranged wife to porn sites

TAVARES — Police have arrested and charged a man with sending explicit images of his wife to social media and porn sites, and to men, while pretending to be her.

He even used his young teenage daughter to place hidden cameras in the bathroom, according to court documents.

The woman said the incidents, involving four charges of violating a domestic violence injunction, 21 counts of video voyeurism and 16 counts of cyber sexual harassment, have given her a “visceral gut reaction” when she hears his name. She suffers from PTSD and has adopted a retired military dog for protection.

The Daily Commercial is not naming the defendant to protect her identity and that of her young teenage daughter.

Clermont Police Lt. Malcolm Draper said he has seen some cases like this in the past, but the explosive growth of social media sites has added a whole new dimension to the problem.

Florida lawmakers, when they drafted video voyeurism laws, noted that people depicted in sexually explicit images have “a legitimate expectation that the image will remain private despite sharing the image with another person, such as an intimate partner."

They noted that it is becoming common practice for publishing images “for no legitimate purpose,” enabling those images “to be viewed indefinitely by persons worldwide and are able to be easily reproduced and shared.”

The practice causes “significant psychological harm” to the victims, according to the statutes.

Violation of a domestic violence injunction is a first-degree misdemeanor, and so is domestic sexual harassment. Both are punishable by up to a year in jail, but the video voyeurism charge is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Authorities seized the man's cellphone when executing a search warrant.

“Between August 2023 and October 2023, I located the following 21 videos from within the approximately 8,000 videos contained within (the defendant's) cellphone,” a detective noted.

Some accounts went back as far as 2014.

The woman went to the police station earlier this year while in the process of getting a divorce from her 38-year-old husband. At first, she was hesitant to press charges, but later changed her mind.

They first started dating in 2008, she said, and became engaged but broke it off. He began sending out explicit images of her when she was in the military.

She had sent some images to him while they were separated by long distance. Because she was in a position of authority and men were coming to the base to look for her, she had to resign.

When she was in Texas, he allegedly sent images to her, her family and to members of her church. She said she reported the actions to police, but “the female detective blamed her.”

She said she tried making her social media sites private.

Later, when they got back together and were living in Missouri, he woke her up one morning with a gun in his hand, accusing her of cheating. She did not report the incident.

One of the images he sent out was of the two of them having sex. She said he distributed the images without her knowledge.

The divorce this year was sparked by jealousy, when he discovered a credit card she shared with a friend, according to court records.

One of the most damaging allegations in the case was that the man was secretly contacting their daughter through various social media accounts, asking her to set up cameras in the bathroom, and to send him photos of her mother wearing a nightgown, getting out of the shower, and undressing.

He asked her to delete his texts to her, but she did not delete all of them. Among the texts that remain are messages that he loved and missed her, and that her mother was telling lies about him.

“These people can be very manipulative sometimes,” Lt. Draper said.

Once forensic experts from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement downloaded his phone, he told detectives the cameras were intended to catch her trying to kill him.

He said he wanted to file charges against her “because she had placed Nair [hair remover] into his body wash bottle and tried to ‘poison’ him. Cameras were found in the doorway to the bathroom from a closet, he said, because he didn’t want her to pawn valuable purses during their divorce.

She told police she found at least 18 websites sites with images of her.

One former coworker in Missouri told her about a conversation he had with a customer who talked about seeing her photo online. It was a professional headshot, and on the company’s website, but it was out of context.

A current coworker, thinking that she was sending out the images, began hitting on her.

Some fake chat room messages pretended to be asking for sex and making lewd comments.

Draper said police warn people to be “very careful” about who they share images with.

Even scarier, the suspect allegedly asked his daughter about what kind of car she was driving, and about who she was seeing after the divorce.

Please sign up today: Daily Briefing newsletter has today's local stories

Clermont police are concerned. In an Oct. 12 arrest affidavit, Detective Susannah Wrap noted,“…although some of [his] firearms were turned over to the Clermont Police Department, at least two known firearms, including a rifle, are still outstanding, with comments made that the weapons were gifted to family.

"The victim in his case has repeatedly stated that she is in fear for her safety and continues to be directly and indirectly re-victimized due to the suspect’s continuous efforts to emotionally harm her. Due to these facts, I am respectfully requesting no bond.”

Bail was set at $185,000.

This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: Man faces multiple counts of video voyeurism. Victim is his estranged wife