Is this revenge on the OW fair or not?

[pinkgown]

Obviously we don't have the whole story, but would you be tempted to do this, to take revenge on the OW on your mother's behalf? I think I might, if I felt my mother and my family had been torn apart by her actions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9j9lpgjxlo

Of course, but some adults get damaged along the way and aren’t able to act in a reasonable and proportionate way, due to trauma inflicted - in this case by a man, their father.

But revenge porn isn't the way to deal with it. We aren't animals, we don't live in the wild west with no rule of law. We are supposed to live in a civilised society. If we think that this action is OK where do we stop? Do we beat up other people, or order their murder? Hopefully most of us don't.

Or perhaps she was a shit person this whole time. Shitty people get cheated on too 🤷🏻‍♀️

As a grown woman capable of plotting a ‘revenge’ over a period of time, she is responsible for her actions. Unless she was psychotic, she was absolutely capability of understanding right from wrong, or at least illegal from legal, and acting accordingly.

My father’s OW is a marriage counsellor! 😂 I occasionally allow myself a little fantasy about trolling her social media, letting all potential clients know about all the disgusting things she has done. She did some really horrible stuff, in league with my father, specifically to hurt my DM. She obviously derives pleasure from the suffering of others.

I agree with a the PP who said it’s often too difficult for a child to hate the parent who has had the affair, and so all animosity it focused on the affair partner. I think it’s a bit unfair to simplify things to such an extent that we say she should have placed the blame solely with her father. It’s such a complex situation.

In my case, I have gone NC with my father, but we never had a good relationship anyway, so I didn’t feel like I lost much.

Revenge porn isn't reasonable or proportionate though. Ever. Nor is harassing the ows innocent daughter. Reasonable and proportionate would be something more like shouting at her 12 years ago. And leaving the cheating loser husband.

Did I say it was. I was responding to the poster who was saying a man wasn’t the root cause of this. The father absolutely is.

Nobody is ever the "root cause" of revenge porn and harassment.

So the daughter should have hollered at the father and left it at that.

But then what’s the root cause of the father’s behavior?

You are just being deliberately dense

In this case the father is.

No. We don't blame sexual crimes on anyone other than they perpetrator.

The perpetrator is now in jail. The root cause being the father’s behaviour.

He hasn’t committed a criminal offence, but he is the root cause of the criminal behaviour of the female members of his family.

I think that's a bit silly. If you're going to go down the route of an adult blaming someone else for their choices, why stop with the father? Why not find someone to blame for him having an affair - maybe his wife was mean?
That would be absurd of course, because him having an affair was his decision and no one made him do it. But I'd also apply that to his daughter and say that neither of them get to blame someone else for their actions.

I wonder if the victim will look to take civil action against them now to claim damages. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did.

I don't think she should have done that at all. Revenge porn is horrific - and the reason you should never ever send nudes with your face included.

She should have focused her anger on her cheating father who betrayed her, not the OW

And what’s the root cause of the father’s behavior? Or do we stop looking for root causes once we’ve found the person we want to blame? How convenient, if so.

I wonder whether the mum thinks her decision to involve her daughters was worth it, now one of them is in jail and the other has lost her career as a result.

To answer your question OP, no. Revenge like this is never fair. It's illegal for a very good reason.

What EB has done is horrendous and she has, quite rightly, been sentenced for it. She clearly isn't remorseful - she forced the OW and her husband to give evidence.

Yes the daughter's anger seems to be misdirected towards the OW rather than her father. It's ridiculous to compare an affair with illegal actions like this which have a horrendous effect on the victims. I would hate for my dh to have an affair but that would pale into insignificance to how I would feel if someone got hold of nude photos of me and sent them to websites/publicly circulated them.

The inability of people to blame a woman's sex crime on the actual woman is ridiculous. She has committed a sex crime, she will probably be on a register when she is released. It is exactly the same as posting revenge porn and if a son had done it, there wouldn't be this squealing from people who seem equally crazy and unable to accept that as adults you take full responsibility for your actions.

No he isn't. That's just an excuse. As I said, lots of people are betrayed but most don't do what Eleanor Brown did. Her criminal behaviour was almost certainly far more influenced by her mother and her sister than the behaviour of her father some years ago.

Trying to pin the blame for criminal behaviour on the father in this instance is - in my book - the same as trying to excuse a man for beating up his wife if she was unfaithful. "She was the reason for my actions." No she bloody well wasn't.

Exactly.

No one is suggesting it is ok to share nudes that ow have sent married men, the point is the time should match the crime and it absolutely does not here.

I fail to see why I am being dense. I am stating that the appropriate action in response to her father's infidelity would have been for the daughter to have given him a piece of her mind ie shouting at him. What she chose to do wasn't appropriate, in other words her actions were to post revenge porn and imply that the OW was an escort. How does that make me dense?

What on earth do you think is an appropriate punishment for sharing nude photos of unconsenting people then?

I don't think some of the more simplistic responses have much value tbh.

There was direct involvement from the sister and mother and the pictures sent were obtained somehow during the father's affair when Eleanor Brown was a teenager.

She's been jailed. She is to blame for her actions but as a case it's much more complex than that.

Criminal behaviour generally is much more complex than that. To ignore that and pretend there isn't usually a root cause doesn't prevent crime or recidivism or help with rehabilitation. It's not a mature or considered point.

Understanding root cause (including intergenerationally or environmentally) isn't about excusing shitty behaviour, it's a really important part of prevention connected with appropriate sentencing.