Lingerie Football Player Sues Ex-Lover Over Nude Photos
Melissa Bery
A lingerie football league player is suing her ex-lover after he allegedly posted nude pictures of her on the Internet and emailed them to her mother.
Melissa Berry, a 24-year-old rookie linebacker with the Tampa Breeze franchise of the Lingerie Football League, is seeking $15,000 in unspecified damages from her ex-boyfriend Mark Dawson, a 45-year-old safe dating expert, whom she dated earlier this fall.
According to Berry’s lawsuit against Dawson, she took nude photographs of herself with his cell phone. Another photo of her engaged in a “particularly private, intimate sexual act,” was also allegedly taken without her permission, the Tampa Tribune said.
Berry claims that she never intended on the photos being shown to anyone else. But shortly after their break-up, Dawson showed two of the pictures to Berry’s friends at a nightclub, the Tribune said.
Berry then destroyed Dawson’s phone. In return, Dawson sent a text message to Berry’s mother on Nov. 10 demanding $500 for the phone’s damages, or he would publicly release the photos. Berry refused, and Dawson then posted the pictures and emailed them to her mother.
“I could have had her arrested and I didn’t,” Dawson said, defending his actions. “All I wanted was this phone back. I am a decent guy … It’s girls like this I fight against in the work that I do.”
Berry is seeking unspecified damages in excess of $15,000.
“I am scared of what he will do to my career,” she said.
Jeff Brown, Berry’s attorney, said the legal question is one of privacy.
“The question is does she have an expectation of privacy in these photos and any woman or man would say absolutely these are not photos you are going to want the public or anyone else to see,” Brown said.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington D.C., said individuals face an uphill battle keeping their privacy in the Internet age.
“It’s not easy,” he said.
Rotenberg said Internet companies are generally protected from what people post on their sites and are reluctant to get in the middle of personal disagreements. It usually is up to the individual to convince the poster to take the offending material down, he said.
He also said the act of objecting could work against the person seeking to remove the item.
“It may call attention to the material, and you risk having even more copies being made,” he said.
Rotenberg, speaking on the general issue of Internet privacy, said people still have traditional remedies such as the civil lawsuit Berry filed.
The Lingerie Football League is an outgrowth of the Lingerie Bowl, an alternative half-time television entertainment show that airs during the Super Bowl. The sixth edition will be played in Tampa on Feb. 1. The Breeze is one of four teams to compete.
Tags: Football, lawsuit, nude photos
December 31st, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I didnt even know there was a Lingerie Football League