Civil Rights & Remedies Against Cyber Sexual Abuse

This post was last updated by the author(s) on August 19, 2026

Reviewed by Christine Dunn and Carolin Guentert, Co-Chairs of Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight’s Sexual Violence, Title IX, and Victims’ Rights Practice Group.

Whether having their intimate images posted on social media or being stalked, surveilled, spoofed, or deep-faked, our clients’ experiences prove the same thing repeatedly: In an increasingly technological world, it’s possible to upend someone’s life with just a few strokes on a keyboard.¹ The speed, scale, anonymity and convenience of technology make it a unique and powerful weapon which both fuels and accelerates sexual abuse. Cyber sexual abuse can happen in any environment, including home, work or school, and can be perpetrated by anyone, including a supervisor, peer, colleague or student. While lawmakers around the country race to write new laws that hold individual abusers and tech platforms accountable in the coming years, existing employment and common laws may offer relief to survivors immediately.

I worked with my abuser, but our mutual employer ignored my complaints – could my company be liable for my abuser’s conduct?

Yes, the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.² Sexual harassment is encompassed within its prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex.³ Title VII of the Act prohibits sexual harassment or other forms of discrimination at work. The statute also prohibits employers from retaliating against workers who raise claims of discrimination.

If the person harassing you works with you, or previously worked with you, your mutual employer may be liable under a claim of “hostile work environment sexual harassment,” a form of gender discrimination. If your working conditions materially worsened due to the severity and pervasiveness of the harassment, your employer could be responsible for creating a hostile work environment. In one example, the Ninth Circuit held that a co-worker’s sexually suggestive Instagram posts about her outside of work hours could be actionable under a claim of a hostile work environment, “especially in light of the ubiquity of social media and the ready use of it to harass and bully both inside and outside of the physical workplace.”⁴ In another example, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals determined the hardcore pornographic websites the victim’s supervisor repeatedly visited on the victim’s computer contributed to a hostile work environment.⁵

If you complained internally about the harassment and your employer failed to respond – or responded by materially downgrading the terms and conditions of your employment (e.g., demoting you, taking away responsibilities, lowering your salary) – you might also have a claim of retaliation against your employer. If the person harassing you is a related third party of your employer (e.g., customer, partner, supplier), you may still be able to bring claims if you reported the conduct to the employer and the employer failed to act.⁶ Additionally, many of these same claims can be brought under state and local laws as well.

I didn’t work with my abuser, but I think his employer was involved – can I still sue?

Yes, even if you and the person abusing you have different employers without any third-party relationship, the abuser’s employer may be liable if he leveraged the employer’s proprietary technology to facilitate the abuse. This might include sending harassing emails from a work email account or storing non-consensual imagery on company servers. Seventy-eight percent of intimate partner stalkers used workplace resources at least once to contact their target.⁷

In some states, if the person harassing you leveraged workplace technology to perpetrate the abuse and / or the employer had reason to know about the misconduct, the employer may be directly liable under the tort of negligent hiring, supervision and or retention. Unlike other civil rights laws, which hold employers vicariously responsible for an abuser’s misconduct, due to the employer-employee relationship, a claim of negligent hiring, supervision or retention holds the employer directly responsible for the abuser’s misconduct.

In Waterbury v. New York City Ballet, Inc., a student with the New York City Ballet (NYCB) realized one of the principal dancers employed by NYCB had shared several intimate images of her with other principal dancers and a board member. The First Department determined that the NYCB could have foreseen the employee dancer’s misconduct due to i) the culture NYCB fostered of “exploiting young women” by allowing the principals to ply underage girls with drugs and alcohol at parties, and ii) by “turning a blind eye to the harmful propensities of its principal dancers,” and that “a board member’s knowledge of communications with employees [could] be imputed to [the employer].”⁸

Contact Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight

If you are a cyber sexual abuse survivor who is looking to pursue legal action against the person who harmed you and/or an institution that failed to protect you, please reach out to Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight. Our Sexual Violence, Title IX and Victims’ Rights Practice Group, led by Co-Chairs Christine Dunn and Carolin Guentert, has extensive experience advocating for survivors of sexual abuse. While many of our individual cases resolve confidentially, when many victims have been harmed, as in the GirlsDoPorn case where our firm won a $13 million verdict for 22 plaintiffs, a class action or multi-plaintiff lawsuit may be the most effective path to accountability.

If you or someone you love is in crisis, free and confidential support is available 24/7 through RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) and the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1.800.422.4453.

Footnotes

<sup>1. https://rainn.org/what-counts-as-sexual-violence/get-the-facts-about-tech-enabled-sexual-abuse/
2. Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, 254 (1964); see also 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 (Title VII).
3. 29 C.F.R. pt. 1604.11.
4. Okonowsky v. Garland, 109 F.4th 1166, 1171 (9th Cir. 2024)
5. Patane v. Clark, 508 F.3d 106, 113 (2d Cir. 2007).
6. See Summa v. Hofstra Univ., 708 F.3d 115, 123 (2d Cir. 2013) (adopting in the Second Circuit the EEOC’s non-employee harassment standard, holding that plaintiff’s claims of sexual harassment by football players could have survived summary judgement had the university not taken action); see also Kudatzky v. Galbreath Co., No. 96 CIV. 2693 (HB), 1997 WL 598586, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 23, 1997) (holding that an employer can be liable for sexual harassment by a non-employee, such as a business associate in this case, under Title VII).
7. Impact of Domestic Offenders on Occupational Safety & Health: A Pilot Study, Me. Dep’t of Lab. (Feb. 2004), https://www.maine.gov/labor/labor_stats/publications/dvreports/domesticoffendersreport.pdf
8. Waterbury v. New York City Ballet, Inc., 205 A.D.3d 154, 164-65 (N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dep’t 2022).</sup>

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.