LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Louisville teacher said she contemplated suicide after someone hacked into her Snapchat account and threatened to release a video of her and her longtime boyfriend engaging in a sex act — a video that had never been made public.
She called police, but later learned her hacker was a Louisville cop.
"He was supposed to protect the community, and I was going for protection, and that was the person who was hurting me," the woman named as Jane Doe in a newly filed civil lawsuit against former Louisville Metro Police officer Bryan Wilson said.Â
Wilson is currently serving a two-and-a-half-year federal prison sentence. Prosecutors said he had at least 25 cyber stalking victims who he harassed in an attempt to get them to send nude pictures and videos after stealing compromising pictures from their social media accounts.Â
"He had got into my Snapchat and took a video without my permission," the woman said. "And then he continued to harass me for three months."
The victim said Wilson would message every day, multiple times a day, using different numbers.Â
"Begging for more pictures, promising he would delete the ones he had if I would just send more," she said.
WDRB News obtained some of those messages. One asks her for "five bra and thong pics and two bra and thong vids," that concludes with "and I show you me deleting them." The messages also show threats of telling the young teacher's principal if she didn't comply.
"I'm trying to help it all go away right now," one text reads. "I haven't posted it anywhere or sent to your principal yet. You could make it all go away."
The complaint in the newly filed civil suit against Wilson says he used his LMPD access to Accurint, a data combing software to identify computer applications belonging to women, to hack those computer applications, and stole compromising photographs and other information.
The victim said she called LMPD's Sex Crimes Unit several times, and no one called back. In July 2020, the panic and fear brought her to the brink.
"I'm not the same person I used to be," she said. "I told my mom, my boyfriend, and my best friend. I wrote something about wanting to kill myself. It was just the fear ... I didn't want to live in fear anymore."
Suddenly, the messages stopped. Wilson, the former LMPD Ninth mobile division officer, was under investigation for posting sexual images in uniform and accused of having sex not only with a fellow officer, but confidential informants while on the job.
Wilson was also one of two officers who threw slushies on people and recorded it on his cell phone while on duty in the city's west end. He pleaded guilty in a deal that settled both the sextortion and slushy cases, receiving 30 months in federal prison.Â
The victim WDRB spoke with on Thursday didn't learn it was an officer who was trying to blackmail her until the FBI told her last year. She said she didn't know Wilson at all, or that he had at least two dozen other victims just like her.Â
"I don't think he got enough time. All of this has been swept under the rug. All the headlines have been about 'slushy gate,' which is very, very wrong, but they're just sweeping what he's done not only to me, but 20 plus other women, under the rug," she said. "And if they felt like I did, like they contemplated suicide and felt unworthy of life, then he did not get enough time."
Now, it's the center of a civil lawsuit going after Wilson and his former superiors, including former LMPD Chiefs Steve Conrad and Robert Schroder.
"Change within the department needs to happen," the victim said.
The lawsuit claims, among other things, neglectful supervision as sexual misconduct complaints involving Wilson went back for several years and internal investigations stayed pending for months.Â
"Sextortion is often referred to as a cyber rape, and I think that's a very accurate description," attorney Sara Collins said.
Collins said it underscores the U.S. Department of Justice's findings that LMPD did not properly investigate sexual misconduct, adding that it wasn't even Louisville investigators who cracked the sextortion scheme. It was the Lexington Police Department. Despite red flags on the former officer's misconduct going back to 2017, and tips in 2019 that he allegedly commented on a nude photo of a child online and engaged in revenge porn.
"I hope there's a recognition of the failures that occurred in this case and so many cases," said Collins.
Wilson resigned from LMPD after he was accused of posting a photo of a female officer performing sex acts on him in 2019.
In October 2022, he had a pending case in Fayette County of extortion and unlawful access to a computer. He was also accused of stealing photos from a University of Kentucky student and extorting her.
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