Defamation Cases Increasingly Target Victims Who Can’t Afford to Speak Out

Elise Aubuchon felt she owed it to other women to speak out. It was 2020, and #MeToo had prompted countless people to publicly expose those who had harassed and abused them. Years after she says she was raped, and once she realized the police weren’t going to pursue her case, she decided to make a public post on Facebook naming the alleged rapist. “MY VOICE WILL BE HEARD,” she wrote. “THIS IS FOR ALL THE VICTIMS OF THIS SICK MAN!!!!”

She wasn’t planning to pursue legal action; she just wanted to warn others. Instead, it was the man she accused who sued her. Almost immediately after she put up her post, he sent her a letter threatening to sue her for defamation if she didn’t take it down. She refused. She hoped it was just an empty threat. But less than three weeks later, he filed a defamation lawsuit against her, according to court records, and demanded $25,000.

“I felt defeated,” she told The Intercept. She was making $11 an hour and had no resources to fight him off; he already had a lawyer. She scrambled to find one of her own, mining the comments on her Facebook post for people to talk to. When she contacted one, she asked what she could do with little to no money. “It was extremely stressful,” she said, not knowing if she would be able to come up with the funds to defend herself. “It’s really scary. And it just feels like a second attack.”

In the five years since the start of the #MeToo movement, a quiet but effective legal backlash has swept over those who spoke out about sexual harassment and abuse. The accused have turned around and sued their accusers, effectively silencing them.

This silencing is even more acute in the aftermath of the libel judgement in Johnny Depp’s case against Amber Heard, where a jury found that her allegations of abuse in an op-ed — an op-ed that didn’t actually name him — were false. Experts warned that anti-feminist groups were mobilizing to bring defamation suits and that it could make survivors of sexual violence and domestic abuse fearful to come forward. Heard’s own team said the outcome would have a “chilling effect.”

But most victims aren’t Hollywood actresses. These cases are mostly being brought against people with few resources, “who are much more ordinary folks: people who are low-paid workers, people who are young, people who are absolutely not in the spotlight,” said Jennifer Mondino, director of the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, which eventually supported Aubuchon with a grant for legal fees. “For those people it is all the more intimidating to be faced with the possibility of being sued.” Those without the resources to fight these lawsuits off may feel forced to recant their accusations, while the potential of being sued for defamation after speaking out is likely keeping others silent in the first place.....