‘You look cute’: Police officer’s disgraceful remark to deepfake porn victim
Hannah Grundy went to police with hundreds of doctored photos and rape threats against her, convinced it was a crime. They failed to take her seriously.
When Hannah Grundy presented police with hundreds of doctored, pornographic photos and violent rape threats against her in February 2022, she was convinced she was the victim of a “devastating” crime.
The high school science teacher and her partner, Kris Ventura, had been alerted the night before to a forum titled “The Destruction of Hannah” featuring deepfakes of Ms Grundy, and a number of her female friends. After combing through the website, the couple came to the disturbing conclusion that the person behind the website was one of their “closest” friends, Andrew Hayler.
“Andy was a safe person to me … He was the guy who would message me to make sure I’d gotten home safe after we’d gone out for a couple of drinks,” Ms Grundy, who shared her experience on Monday’s Australian Story, told news.com.au.
“And I still have this message that he sent me, checking in that I’d gotten home (safe), when he was posting these things on the site at the same time. It is shocking to know that someone can slip under your radar so easily, and they can just pretend to be such a good person.”
She and Mr Ventura took their suspicion of Hayler to officers at Newtown Police Station the next day, armed with a trove of evidence against him and the belief that “something would happen”.
“We were so naive that we just assumed that that’s how justice gets served,” Ms Grundy said.
Worried about her mental health and “still in this state of shock”, she told officers was happy to give her statement, but did not want to see the photos.
“Instead, the police who I originally spoke to made comments that were very flippant about it,” Ms Grundy recalled.
“Like, ‘Oh, well, you look cute in this one’ and, ‘What did you do to this man?’ As if I’d done something, (insinuating) ‘You must have wronged him in some way’.
“And I just remember feeling like, you’ve gotta keep the police on side. So you smile and you laugh and you go along with it – but coming away from it later, they were so hurtful, those comments, to me at the time.”
They also advised she and Mr Ventura simply “tell (Hayler) to just stop posting”.
“We left there that day … I had some hope, but Kris left thinking that they hadn’t taken it seriously,” Ms Grundy said.
“The whole thing just felt like, ‘Yeah, maybe this isn’t a big deal, maybe it isn’t a crime what’s happened to me’, because I don’t think this is how you would handle it if this was serious.”
NSW Police did not respond directly to questions about Ms Grundy’s experience at Newtown Police Station. In a statement to news.com.au, a spokesperson said that Inner West Police Area Command detectives “immediately” commenced an investigation into the incident following Ms Grundy’s report on February 3, 2022.
As one of the world’s leading academic experts on digital misogyny and gender-based violence, Dr Emma Jane, previously explained to news.com.au, telling women who have been targeted for non-consensual deepfake pornography that it’s not “real” could be considered a form of gaslighting.
“Unfortunately, it has many parallels with the way sexual violence and gendered harassment is downplayed in our broader culture. Victim blaming and shaming is prevalent everywhere,” Dr Jane said.
“Debates about whether sexual violence is ‘real’ if it occurs online are often used as an opportunity to further attack those who speak publicly about their experiences … technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) can have a severe – and embodied – impact on targets that affects their psychological health, their livelihoods, their reputation, and their physical safety.”
She pointed to a 2020 study by the EIU, which found that of women who had experienced online violence in the previous year, seven per cent lost or had to change their job, 35 per cent reported mental health issues, one in 10 experienced physical harm as a result of online threats, and almost nine in 10 reported restricting their online activity in a way that limited their access to employment, education, healthcare, and community.
As is often the case with sexual abuse and harassment, the path to justice for victims like Ms Grundy is not an easy one – not least because the costly, time-consuming burden of legal recourse often falls on them.
Five months after first approaching police, she received a call in July 2022 informing her the case had been suspended (NSW Police maintain they never stopped investigating).
On their lawyer’s advice, she and Mr Ventura recruited a forensic computing expert to compile a report that supported their assertion Hayler was the perpetrator. This, on top of their legal fees, set the couple back close to $20,000.
Ms Grundy is under no illusion she would not have been able to shoulder this cost alone. Without Mr Ventura, “there would’ve been no justice in this case”.
“And I think the uncomfortable takeaway from this story is that without a partner in finance, and without these kind of links we had to people – like our friend that was a lawyer who found a lawyer for us – you don’t get any justice, and I never would’ve been able to pay for this, ever,” she said.
“Without that (report), it would’ve gone nowhere.”
Such a hefty price tag, Ms Grundy said, is also prohibitive to the demographic these types of crimes are most likely to damage: young women.
“And they’re going to be early in their careers, and they’re going to not have the ability to pay for this kind of service that we got. I don’t know how they get justice,” she said.
“I just cannot imagine the girls that I teach having to deal with this, and having to contend with it. I’m in a place of such privilege to be old enough, and to have the money and a job, and put myself out. But I just cannot imagine this happening to someone who is very young.
“So I guess why we did this, why we told this story was just in hope that the next women – young women – who come out and have to deal with this, have a better response than we did.”
Police arrested Hayler on August 25, 2022, after raiding his Erskineville home. By the time he was sentenced, he had entered guilty pleas to 28 counts of using a carriage service to cause offence against 26 complainants over a two-year period.
On June 21 this year, Judge Jane Culver sentenced Hayler to a landmark nine years in jail, with a non-parole period of five-and-a-half years – which people might hear and “think, ‘Wow, that’s a long time’”, Ms Grundy said. (Hayler has appealed against his sentence.)
“But this has changed my whole life. And I think for my friends, also, we did nothing wrong,” she continued.
“It’s one of those things where there is no way I could’ve stopped this from occurring. I locked down my Facebook, I locked down my Instagram. The only thing I did wrong was having been friends with someone who I really trusted.”
For Ms Grundy, the other women involved and their families, the consequences of Hayler’s actions will far outlast any jail term he could possibly serve.
“Our photos will be online forever. And they will always be online,” Ms Grundy said.
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“So when you go for jobs, when you have children … this is always going to be a part of my life.
“I believe he got the sentence he deserved … but for us and the other girls, I think it just goes on forever. It doesn’t end.”
Any Australian whose images or videos have been altered to appear sexualised and are published online without consent can contact eSafety for help to have them removed.
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