Several prominent victims’ rights advocates, including a lawyer who specializes in “revenge porn” litigation, accused Ed Henry on Tuesday of “slut-shaming” his alleged rape victim—and worse—with 15 salacious and explicit photos attached to a court filing seeking to dismiss a disturbing sexual-abuse lawsuit against the disgraced former cable-news anchor and his ex-employer, Fox News.
“That Defendant Henry would double down on his abusive conduct by engaging in this kind of blatant victim shaming is simply abhorrent,” Michael J. Willemin, attorney for Henry’s accuser, former Fox Business reporter/producer Jennifer Eckhart, wrote in a letter Tuesday to U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams, who is overseeing the case. “[I]t is obvious that Defendant Henry chose to publicly file such personal and intimate images of Eckhart to humiliate and retaliate against her for her decision to speak out against his sexual abuse.”
While Willemin wrote to the judge that his application for an emergency stay, temporarily sealing Henry’s filing—which has already generated significant publicity—was granted Tuesday morning, he is readying “a formal application to Your Honor.”
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Eckhart, for her part, told The Daily Beast: “Rape is rape, and can never be ‘justified’ or ‘excused.’ The fact that Ed Henry, a married man who is 20 years older than me—with a teenage daughter, no less—released images of me to use as his ‘defense’ for violently raping me should tell America everything they need to know about him. My abuser used his position of power at Fox News to try to manipulate and gather what he knew could be used against me as blackmail. I can only hope that none of his other victims are subjected to these types of tasteless, vicious and cowardly attacks.”
Eckhart added: “Sexual predators like Ed Henry are experts at coercion and collecting blackmail on victims to keep them silent. His disgusting and degrading tactic did not work on me as I am no longer afraid of him.”
Fox News fired Henry on July 1, six days after the company investigated Eckhart’s claims brought to it by the law firm Wigdor LLC. Eckhart’s lawsuit was filed later that month. A spokesperson for Fox News, which remains a defendant in the suit, declined to comment. Fox News filed its own motion to dismiss the lawsuit Monday night, arguing that the right-leaning cable channel “cannot be held liable for Ed Henry’s alleged misconduct.”
Prominent labor litigator Nancy Erika Smith—who won a $20-million settlement for former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson in her July 2016 sexual harassment suit against the outlet’s chairman, Roger Ailes—called Henry’s photographic court filing an attempt to “slut-shame Ms. Eckhart.” Smith added: “So this is a blatant part of the usual ‘sluts and nuts’ defense to sexual harassment claims. I’m not sure it will work anymore.”
Willemin’s letter—asking the judge to place Henry’s motion to dismiss along with its X-rated attachments under seal—was sent the morning after Henry’s lawyer, Catherine M. Foti, filed a 39-page memorandum arguing that their sexual relationship was entirely consensual while including photos and dozens of sexually explicit emails and text messages between the single Eckhart and the married Henry.
In a representative exchange quoted in Roti’s filing, Henry emailed Eckhart, “I’d like to wipe you with my tongue.” To which she allegedly responded: “I bet you would, dirty boy. Come n get it ;).” The memorandum claims that Eckhart omitted her responses to Henry in her July 20 complaint because they were evidence “that Eckhart was a willing, consenting, and enthusiastic participant in their relationship.”
Henry’s filing continues: “Eckhart likewise fails to mention the numerous pornographic photos that she sent to Mr. Henry…These photos include photos of Eckhart posing seductively, photos of her naked breasts, photos of her buttocks in a thong, and closeups of her vagina. Eckhart took all of these photos herself…”
Willemin’s letter to Judge Abrams said Henry’s visual exhibits—several of which have somehow become public, having leaked onto Twitter in the past 24 hours—“purport to show several pictures of Ms. Eckhart in a nude and/or semi-nude state.”
Eckhart, however, raised doubts about the photos’ authenticity in a statement for this story.
“It appears Ed Henry and his legal team intended to mislead the court and the public by submitting pictures that aren’t even of me, by falsely claiming them to be me in order to cause harm and humiliation,” she said. “Unfortunately, this is not only unethical, but may be in violation of the New York Cyber Sexual Abuse Law. Regardless of who is in those pictures, photographs do not equal consent. On numerous occasions, my abuser demanded that I send him pictures of myself. No man has the right to rape a woman because they received pictures from her.”
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Henry’s lawyer, Catherine Foti, defended using the explicit photos.
“To defend himself from the false and defamatory accusations included in the plaintiff’s filings, Mr. Henry’s motion provided images, many of them with graphic content obscured, of selfies that Ms. Eckhart voluntarily sent to Mr. Henry,” she said. “The motion also includes various salacious electronic messages from Ms. Eckhart to Mr. Henry, including one email that states ‘Come n get it ;)’ providing additional context to the facts about this case. Mr. Henry has every right to defend himself against these allegations and to provide the Court with information pertinent to that defense.”
However, Brooklyn-based attorney Carrie Goldberg, a specialist in “revenge porn” litigation, predicted that Henry’s filing wouldn’t help his case.
“The strategy behind including the skimpy images is so dumb,” Goldberg told The Daily Beast. “The decision to consensually share an image does not impeach a person’s credibility about nonconsensual sex. Being a recipient of a sexy image is not an invitation nor does it entitle a person to commit an assault. This type of attempted slut-shaming and weaponization of lawsuits makes rape victims think that they—and their allegations—will be seen as less credible because at some point there existed photos of them wearing underwear. The legal strategy here is baffling.”
TIME’S UP Foundation official Latifa Lyles told The Daily Beast: “Degrading tactics have been used to intimidate or coerce victims into silence for generations, and we are not going to just let that happen anymore… I imagine Ed Henry’s team is aware of one of the most toxic myths about rape: that a victim would never send friendly or flirtatious messages or photos to a perpetrator. This is a line of defense that perpetrators have used for generations—that survivors somehow ‘asked for it.’ Well that just couldn’t be further from the real-world experiences of survivors. Because most perpetrators of sexual violence are known to their victims, ongoing contact is not uncommon, especially when the abuser or harasser has power over their victim’s career.”
Meanwhile, the emotional impact of such a court filing—especially if explicit photos end up online--can be devastating, said clinical psychologist Chloe Carmichael.
“It could feel like a re-enactment of the original trauma for an alleged victim to have compromising photographs wallpapered on the internet by the accused rapist,” Carmichael said. “It could make the alleged victim feel like the alleged attacker has the power to humiliate her over and over again in a public format. Having those images plastered all over the internet by her attacker or agents of the attacker could trigger a re-living of the experience of losing control over her own body.”
The psychologist added: “It sends a message to alleged rape victims that coming forward may leave them vulnerable to feeling even more exposed and violated than if they had stayed quiet.”
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Diana Falzone was an on-camera reporter for Fox News from 2012 to 2018. In May 2017, she filed a gender discrimination and disability lawsuit against the network and settled, and left the company in March 2018. She was represented by attorney Nancy Erika Smith.
