Derek Achong

West In­dies and T&T bats­man Lendl Sim­mons is be­ing sued by a for­mer girl­friend for post­ing in­ti­mate pho­tographs of her on so­cial net­work­ing sites af­ter their re­la­tion­ship end­ed.The woman, an ac­count ex­ec­u­tive, is seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion from Sim­mons for breach­ing the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of their re­la­tion­ship by broad­cast­ing the im­ages, tak­en by him dur­ing a sex­u­al en­counter, with­out her per­mis­sion.

What­ev­er the out­come, the law­suit will be con­sid­ered a land­mark case as it is the first time an act of in­ter­net "re­venge porn" has been lit­i­gat­ed in T&T.Cur­rent­ly, there is no spe­cif­ic law which makes the act a crim­i­nal of­fence, thus forc­ing the woman to file a civ­il law­suit against Sim­mons. Ac­cord­ing to her wit­ness state­ment filed be­fore High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad, the woman is claim­ing that she and Sim­mons start­ed the re­la­tion­ship when they met at a par­ty in 2013.

Af­ter a year-and-a-half to­geth­er, the woman said she broke up with Sim­mons af­ter she dis­cov­ered that he was en­gaged to be mar­ried while in­volved with her. The woman ad­mit­ted that she then con­tact­ed Sim­mons' fi­ance at the time, now his cur­rent wife, to in­form her of the sit­u­a­tion.

In re­sponse, she claims Sim­mons al­leged­ly used sev­er­al mo­bile apps, in­clud­ing Viber, to send pho­tos of sex­u­al acts they took while to­geth­er to her for­mer boyfriend and to sev­er­al of his friends, in­clud­ing his lo­cal and re­gion­al team-mates–Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard–who are ex­pect­ed to be sum­moned by the woman as wit­ness­es in the tri­al.Be­sides dam­ag­ing her rep­u­ta­tion, the woman is claim­ing the re­lease of the im­ages al­so caused her sig­nif­i­cant emo­tion­al dis­tress.

Sex en­coun­ters

Sim­mons is deny­ing he was in a re­la­tion­ship with the woman which war­rant­ed the lev­el of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty she is claim­ing. In­stead, through his lawyers, he is al­leg­ing their en­coun­ters were strict­ly sex­u­al.On June 5 last year, Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh grant­ed the woman an in­junc­tion against Sim­mons, or­der­ing him to delete the im­ages and to re­frain from dis­trib­ut­ing them fur­ther.

De­tails of the case had ini­tial­ly been deemed as con­fi­den­tial, with on­ly the par­ties' lawyers be­ing al­lowed to at­tend per­vi­ous hear­ings. But the seal over case was lift­ed when it was trans­fered to Seep­er­sad, who will pre­side over the tri­al. Seep­er­sad held a brief case-man­age­ment con­fer­ence in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day, where he met lawyers for the two par­ties to dis­cuss the case.

Sim­mons, who played for Mum­bai In­di­ans in last year's In­di­an Pre­mier League, was not present for the hear­ing as he is with the West In­dies team in Aus­tralia prepar­ing for the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) World Cup.The woman is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Naveen Maraj and Chris­t­ian Chan­dler, while Ken Wright ap­peared for Sim­mons.The case comes up for an­oth­er case man­age­ment con­fer­ence on March 23.

Re­venge porn

Re­venge porn is de­fined as the dis­tri­b­u­tion of a sex­u­al im­age of some­one with­out their per­mis­sion and with the in­tent to cause them dis­tress.The is­sue has re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion since the prac­tice be­came pop­u­lar with the ad­vent of nu­mer­ous pho­to-shar­ing and so­cial me­dia apps over the past few years.With law­mak­ers be­ing un­able to keep up with rapid­ly evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy, many of­fend­ers have gone un­pun­ished.

Last No­vem­ber, 21-year-old Luke King be­came the first per­son in the Unit­ed King­dom (UK) to be jailed for en­gag­ing in re­venge porn.Like T&T, the UK does not have any spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion which out­laws the prac­tice. As such, King was pros­e­cut­ed un­der that coun­try's ha­rass­ment laws for fail­ing to ad­here to two pre­vi­ous warn­ings from po­lice when he de­cid­ed to post a nude im­age of his for­mer girl­friend on in­stant mes­sag­ing app What­sapp.

The UK Par­lia­ment is de­bat­ing the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Courts Bill 2013�14, which makes re­venge porn an of­fence pun­ish­able by a max­i­mum jail term of two years.