Chances are, if you keep an eye on what's going on in YouTube land, you'll already be aware of Chrissy Chambers. The 24-year-old vlogger, along with her girlfriend Bria Kam, have over 370,000 subscribers on their channel BriaAndChrissy and a further 130,000 on their other channel that they use to document their relationship.
But then two weeks ago, Chrissy uploaded another video. About revenge porn. Which she herself has been the victim of. Six years ago, after she broke up with an ex-boyfriend, he filmed them having sex and uploaded it to the internet. According to Chrissy 'neither the filming or the sex act was consensual.' She was alerted to the video four years later when a commenter called her a 'slut' and linked to the video. Chrissy described watching the video back 'like being hit in the chest with a baseball.'
In April this year, uploading revenge porn became illegal but, because Chrissy's case occured back in 2009, she's found it hard to get justice. Police in the US (where Chrissy is from) claimed they were unable to do anything as the video was uploaded in the UK (where the ex-boyfriend was from) and police in the UK were similarly stuck due to the incident occuring in America.
Now Chrissy has found legal representation over here, and is working to change the law in her native US. According to her Change.org petition which already has over 130,000 signees, she is hoping to help push through a bill that would criminalise revenge porn. She's asking participants to 'stand with me and call on Congress to end this horrific practice once and for all.'
Things have been tough for Chrissy since she found out about all of this. Speaking to the Telegraph, she said; 'It all sort of crept up on me.' And so she started drinking. 'I was trying to numb the pain. I didn't realise how serious it was until I woke up in ER from passing out from too much alcohol.' Now though, she thinks that sharing her story will help. 'In a sense I feel I've gained a very small bit of peace and sense of justice by sharing this story. But in the long-term obviously I want to have him prosecuted under some criminal law. If the the revenge porn law doesn't go after backdated cases maybe we can use malicious harassment or something.'
Sharing her story isn't just a way to help herself find closure, though. She's hoping that she'll help others with similar experiences find solace. 'I don't want other victims to go through two years of not being able to speak out, or the shame of telling someone you were the victim of revenge porn. There's tons of search videos of people trying to find videos of me. I don't want people to have to go through that kind of devastation. I need to speak out now so other people have hope for the future.'
You can sign the petition here.
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Follow Jess on Twitter @Jess_Commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.