Before leaving the Missouri governor’s office, Eric Greitens (R) signed a bill into law would make it a felony to threaten to send out nonconsensual, private sexual images to coerce someone. Greitens resigned after an investigation found that he took an explicit photo of a woman and threatened her with its release before forcing her to performing oral sex.
The Missouri state legislature released a special investigative report in April on the 2015 incident, in which Greitens was said to have blindfolded a woman who worked as his hairdresser, ripped her shirt, pulled her pants down, blindfolded her, slapped her in the face and called her “a whore,” sexually assaulted her, and threatened her with the release of nude photo.
According to the report, the woman described Greitens’ actions:
Witness 1 testified that Greitens then said, ‘You’re not going to mention my name. Don’t even mention my name to anybody at all, because if you do, I’m going to take these pictures, and I’m going to put them everywhere I can. They are going to be everywhere, and then everyone will know what a little whore you are.’
After he threatened her, she described him laying her down on the floor as she cried, putting his hands on her, and coercing her into performing oral sex:
He starts undoing his pants, and he takes his penis out and puts it, like, near where my face is. And I’m like – so this guy literally just wants me for this, and this is all he wants, and then he’ll let me – because at this point, too, I also know I have to be at work, and he’s not going to let me leave, because he’s obviously still horny. So I gave him oral sex at this point.
Greitens was also facing felony charges of computer data tampering but St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner announced a deal to dismiss that charge on Wednesday. He was accused of using his veterans charity’s donor list for this 2016 gubernatorial campaign. He was indicted on felony invasion of privacy for his alleged actions in the 2015 incident the report described, but the charge was dropped, according to Politico.
It took months for Greitens to resign and he still has not admitted to any legal wrongdoing. During a press conference on Tuesday, Greitens characterized himself as a victim.
“This ordeal has been designed to cause an incredible amount of strain on my family. Millions of dollars of mounting legal bills, endless personal attacks designed to cause maximum damage to family and friends,” Greitens told reporters. “Legal harassment of colleagues, friends and campaign workers and it’s clear that for the forces that oppose us, there is no end in sight. I cannot allow those forces to continue to cause pain and difficulty to the people that I love.”
A majority of states have passed some kind of law addressing the release of nonconsensual pornography, although the laws vary and there is no federal law that covers the phenomenon of releasing nude photos and other sexual content as a form of retribution.
Some laws only address incidents in which a photo was taken without the victim’s consent and later distributed, while other legislation, such as a law in Washington, D.C., protects victims who had “an agreement or understanding” that the person they shared an image with would not disclose it to a wider audience.