While the 70-year-old woman who former Playboy model Dani Mathers illegally photographed nude and posted to social media is staying anonymous, her Los Angeles City attorney who argued her case, Mike Feuer, is speaking on her behalf — and says the incident left her “humiliated.”
Feuer spoke to the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday on the victim’s behalf, after Mathers pleaded no contest to invasion of privacy and told Good Morning America that she has received death threats and lost her own privacy.
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“One thing that appears to be the case now is that Ms. Mathers is attempting to portray herself as the victim. She is not the victim. She is the perpetrator,” Feuer says.
Feuer also wants to make it known that despite Mathers’ claims that she has tried to apologize to the victim, the victim says otherwise.
“I saw Ms. Mathers on Good Morning America. She claims that she’s tried to contact the victim, I presume to apologize. I will share with you, that surprises the victim, who told me she is unaware of any attempt by Ms. Mathers to reach out to her,” he says.
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He also pointed out that even though Mathers claims she only meant to send the illegal photo to a friend, rather than publicly post it, that simply taking the photo is still breaking the law. He hopes that in the future the body-shaming nature of the photo (“If I can’t unsee this, you can’t either”) will be illegal as well.
“When I first became aware of this case, it was striking to me that the taking of the photo was a crime but that the subsequent dissemination of it was not,” he says. “That gap in the law is a gap we are trying to close right now.”
In the end, Mathers ended up receiving 30 days of community service and three years’ probation. Although there was massive backlash against Mathers’ punishment — many called for a harsher sentencing, saying she got off with a “slap on the wrist” — Feuer believes it to be fair.
“This is community labor. This is not a glamorous star turn someplace. This is erasing graffiti on the street. And I think that, combined with restitution, combined with the probationary terms here, which are fairly extensive, taken together is an appropriate sentence,” he says.
Now the victim, Feuer says, just “wishes the whole chapter, this painful chapter, would close.”
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