“What is unfortunate, and what I personally find wrong with sharing the screenshots of Maris Racal and Anthony Jennings on social media, is the slut-shaming of Maris Racal for her alleged ‘thirst trap/hunger’ messages,” said attorney Jesus Falcis

Actors Maris Racal and Anthony Jennings screwed up.

Unfortunately, fraud does happen, but what’s even worse for public figures is that a fraud case naturally develops into a nationwide scandal.

But to get straight to the point of my headline, Maris is the one most ridiculed, with a sizable majority fixated on a select number of quotes from her. “You miss my body?”; “That was so hot”; “Smoke then fuck”; and a few others. They have now been reused countless times and saved into memes. (A segue: If there had been no cheating involved, these would have been natural messages to send to a lover.)

Memes have also emerged that dig up old videos of Maris that now have new, ironic meaning, as well as more serious posts chastising Maris.

But the shaming was largely directed at Maris. We can do better: We can also let our shame bells ring against Maris’ fraudulent accomplice and co-conspirator Anthony Jennings. (Or were Anthony’s midnight correspondences just a little too repetitive to be meme-worthy?)

Attorney Jesus Falcis puts it succinctly in his now-viral explanation of the potential legal issues that fraudulent screenshot leakers and Anthony’s ex Jam Villanueva could also face:

“What’s unfortunate and what I personally find wrong with sharing the screenshots of Maris Racal and Anthony Jennings across social media is the slut-shaming of Maris Racal based on her alleged ‘thirst trap/hunger’ messages.” Look what statements have gone viral. 3-4 messages from Maris Racal and only 1, barely viral, from Anthony Jennings (about him disgustingly using methods as justification).

“Cheating is bad. But so is misogyny, which is enabled by the violation of the right to privacy.”

It looks like we are playing on our social prejudices – that the woman is the seductress in sexual encounters and the man, in his innocence, is powerless against these female temptations.

We operate from there in this still-evolving saga.

And again, we’re seeing how quickly social media reinforces and reinforces these kinds of ingrained prejudices – so that ideas like “Hey, maybe we should blame the guy this time too, and we should know by now that it takes two” leaving little room to tango” or “Hey, maybe we should also focus on how Anthony Jennings made the weirdest, most ridiculous excuses and betrayed his then-girlfriend Jam.”

On another point, Jam could have sought the opinion of a lawyer on the subject of leaked screenshots.

The aforementioned Falcis says he’s been asked about it before. He said:

“Even before screenshots of text or chat messages between Maris Racal and Anthony Jennings were leaked today, many people – especially those who have been scammed – have always asked me about the legality of posting and sharing screenshots of private conversations… even if you If you’ve been the victim of a scam, posting screenshots of an alleged affair not only exposes you to a charge of online defamation, but also a charge of breach of privacy – which comes with more stringent and is punished with harsher penalties than cyber criminals for defamation.”

What should scammers do then? Falcis suggests still taking screenshots of possible evidence of cheating or an affair. But don’t post it on social media. Instead, file a lawsuit for violence against women (VAW), specifically “psychological violence caused by infidelity.”

Once screenshots are presented as evidence in court, they no longer fall under the right to privacy rules, Falcis explained.

Jam must have been in great distress when she posted the screenshots, so perhaps no amount of sound legal advice could have stopped her – we’ll never know.

All we know is that hell knows no fury.

(But if we despise, could we then despise equal opportunities for men and women in incidents like this?) – Rappler.com