A couple of weeks ago, Mischa Barton held a press conference with her lawyer to reveal that she’d been the victim of revenge porn. She said that an ex was attempting to sell and release a sex tape of her, taken without her knowledge or consent. It was horrifying and the details which came out at the time made it sound awful. Mischa obtained a restraining order against two ex boyfriends who were friends of each other whom she dated in succession. It sounded like they were colluding with each other to blackmail her. Also, Mischa had to be hospitalized in January after she was given a date rape drug. It sounds like that was related to this, but we’ll have to wait to hear more.
Mischa is set to appear on Dr. Phil on Monday and they’ve released a clip ahead of the show. She’s very matter-of-fact about it, and it must have taken a lot for her to go public with this. She explains the blackmail and emotional abuse she was subjected to by her ex. He taped their intimate moments with hidden cameras and it sounds like she went through hell afterwards. She cut him out of her life and now she’s gone public with it.
Mischa Barton said she has been the target of “emotional abuse” from her ex who shopped around a sex tape of her.
During a recent interview on The Dr. Phil Show, set to air Monday, the 31-year-old actress says her former lover was aiming to ruin her through what she called “complete emotional blackmail.”
“It was a crime. It is a serious crime to tape people without their knowledge like that and I had made the mistake of putting myself in the situation with the person so I just removed myself as quickly as I could, and then it just continued to be complete emotional abuse after that for the last several, several months,” she explained.
Barton also recalled the alarming way she learned of the sex tape’s existence.
“Somebody came up to me on the street… and said there’s something I need to tell you and I didn’t believe it at first, I couldn’t believe it,” The O.C. alum recalled. “Because I had loved this person and I didn’t think it was possible.”
She added, “And I later learned it was entirely possible.”
It must be such a nightmare to hear that someone you trusted loved had taped it when you had sex and you didn’t even know. I hope she’s ok and I think Mischa deserves a lot of credit for going public with this. The guy who did this to her is complete scum. She is absolutely the victim here and I hope that her ex pays to the full extent of the law.
Here’s a segment where she’s talking about the night she was slipped the date rape drug GHB. She says she blacked out.
photos credit: FameFlynet and Dr. Phil/Screenshots
I”m not a Dr. Phil fan, but good for her for going public with this and taking back her story from someone who’s trying to steal it. Also, isn’t that Gloria Allred? Double good on her for lawyering up.
I believe that is Lisa Bloom daughter of Gloria Allred in that photo. She is Mischa’s lawyer
Ahhh, thanks for the info on Lisa. I hope she gets maximum justice for her client.
Agreed
I believe Letterman did the same thing by going public with his blackmailer.
I hope justice is swift and harsh.
Using a person’s body and sexuality against her/him is not okay.
Also, I still have a deep distaste for Dr Phil… even if this is for a good cause, I still have the feels about his click baitey ways.
Good for you Mischa. Lawyer up, and throw away the ‘trash’.
Sending her all my best. I’m glad she’s facing it head-on and discussing it which helps take a lot of the power away from those soulless scumbags. I’m single right now, but I hate that the next time I’m with someone, im going to feel like I have to c.i.a. level check each room. It will probably kill the romance.
Damn, I was just thinking the same thing when I read your comment. Either turn super sleuth or change the location at the last minute.
I think this is straight out criminal rather than revenge pron.
Revenge pron implies there was an element of consent to taping and those images/ video being used after the relationship has broken up. That is not the case here. There was no consent at all.
What happened to Mischa is straight up criminal like that lady who was filmed undressing in her hotel room by a hotel manager who had drilled holes into her room to do this.
Just because Mischa was in a relationship with this fellow doesn’t mean he didn’t commit a crime against her, and then he tried to sell the tapes to the highest bidder.
No, there is no implied consent with “revenge p*rn.” There have been a number of cases exactly like this. In any case, a number of states have made this kind of action “straight up criminal,” so I am not really sure the distinction you are making.
No I agree with LAK, there is a distinction between the two crimes – its not that one is worse than the other – but they are different types of crimes.
EOA: The term ‘revenge pron’ gained currency in cases where the person doing the revenging had obtained the images from the subject with full consent and knowledge of subject. To use them to humiliate is an abuse of trust placed in the receiver.
What happened to Mischa is different and more terrifying because she did not consent to the creation of these images, had no knowledge these images were being created nor did she place that sort of trust in anyone to create/ give them this type of image.
Both acts are criminal, but the latter is less cosy than ‘revenge pron’ and is straight up more violating.
to use a different analogy, it’s the difference between a cold, planned murder vs manslaughter even though outcome is still the same.
Eoa not consent to show the video but knowledge and consent that there was a video
Her ex is… There is no word.
I hope no woman sleeps with him, ever. I mean, if there was a sure-fire way to make that happen, it’s to become known as a guy who secretly tapes women he sleeps with, wtf.
A monster! He should have his balls cut off!
This makes me so angry
I don’t buy the whole I didn’t know I was being taped. Something sounds fishy about the whole thing. The timing is perfect. Don’t you think?
I don`t think it is fair to dismiss Mischa`s claims, mostly because I think if she wants to restart her career, this is not the kind of attention she wants. It screems Kardashian and not Hollywood. I guess unless she presses charges and a trial we have no way of knowing if she is telling the truth.
But I want to point out that it would be illegal to publish the sex tape without consent from both participants so no major porn publisher would sign off on that. It would leave them open to law suits and cost them lots of money. Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton signed off on their respective porn tapes and that is why they were published.
But of course her ex could always upload the video to a porn tube site which would be also illegal but would force Mischa to take legal action to take it down. No matter what you believe it is messy as hell and if Mischa is a victim in this lawyering up is a good move certainly.
However why she needed to do that Dr Phil interview is beyond me. Surely she could have found some other show to interview her? I mean, this is the show that had Dina Lohan and Farrah Abrahams- it`s quite trashy.
@naomipaige I agree with you about her knowing the sex tapes were being made. However, she is still a victim here. It makes me sick that people release these tapes. I don’t know what I would do if that happened to me. I wish people (men and women) would stop making sex tapes only b/c the private tapes always see the light of the day in the end. We’re not in the VHS days anymore. These videos are being made on cell phones and spread like wildfire either by an angry ex or by being hacked. The whole situation is scary and wrong.
Even if she knew she was being recorded, her ex has no right to sell the tape without her consent. But women are always lying or fishy, am I right?
Exactly. Even if she doesn’t want to admit she made a sex tape, so what? Her ex has no right to sell it without her consent. So it’s irrelevant!
My best friend was friends with a guy who used to record women without them knowing and then go around trying to randomly show people. It’s easy to record someone without them knowing it.
If your best friend was friends with this jerk, maybe you need a new best friend.
Oh my goodness. You must know the same guy I do.
My ex had a friend in high school who recorded women without their knowledge. This was back in the 90s. I can’t imagine what he’d do with that type of stuff in the age of internet.
Can I point out that this all Mischa’s side of the story? I’m not here to stick up for her ex, but she has no credibility. Her career has cratered since she left the OC, and she has personally gone downhill with it, which is sad, but she, you know, says things that aren’t true to mitigate her failures and failings. Dancing With the Stars didn’t work. This won’t either. By summer she’ll a yacht girl. Again.
Red Snapper: Okay, I rarely comment on this site, but I have to call major bullshit on your comment. How have her career failings ruined her credibility?? A person’s credibility is called into question when they’re caught repeatedly lying, which Mischa hasn’t. I have had my fair share of career ups and downs, as I imagine most people on this site have as well, and you better believe my credibility is still intact. So if she was still an A-list star you’d be more inclined to believe her? Excuse me, but that’s a load of hypocritical crap.
LOL, there never really does seem to be a ‘right time’ for these celebrities who are women (especially if they fail to live up to certain ideals or aren’t the best, most ‘together’ people) to expose abusive or possibly criminal behaviors from males without many seeing it as dishonest in some way, does there?
@*RED* Snapper (hmmmm…..): I don’t know if the Yatch Girl rumor about her is or isn’t true, because while it’s definitely something that exists, ‘Blind gossip’ rumors on the interwebz claiming that a public figure with a vagina has been a prostitute don’t really count as receipts or even as a rarity. Either way, it’s just textbook slut-shaming and misogyny to try to bring up rumors of a woman being a prostitute or anything else about her sexual history to try to discredit her claims of abusive behavior from a partner. But let’s just say it’s true for a second. How does that mean she’s lying? How does that make her more immune to an abusive ex and his best friend resorting to something like this than a ‘virgin’ (not a literal virgin) with a great career going for her? By the way, relevant, wealthy famous women with careers get that rumor too. Mischa Barton’s career failure and mental health issues don’t make her less trustworthy than an ex (and best friend, who forged her signature on a check) who’s using private sexual pics or videos to blackmail her, whether any or all of the video or pictures were initially taken with her consent to PRIVATELY be enjoyed or whether it was all recorded without her consent in the first place.
Well in Finland we only just had a similar case, where a man was convicted of filming his sex partners without their consent or knowledge. So it is possible and it does happen. Probably a lot more than people can and want to imagine:
“Former Finnish Music Television presenter Axl Smith has been convicted of secretly filming himself having sex with dozens of women in his bedroom. Smith was handed a 14-month suspended sentence for 30 counts of voyeurism, four counts of defamation and two counts of disseminating information that violates privacy. Smith had shown some of the videos to others, including through the messaging service WhatsApp.
He admitted to some of the offences, but claimed the tapes were simply part of his home security system, and intended to protect him against potential allegations of wrongdoing.
Helsinki District Court also ordered Smith to pay his victims 100,000 euros in damages and more than 50,000 euros in legal expenses. There were a total of 29 victims. Charges were not filed in some other cases due to insufficient evidence or the statute of limitations.”
Source: http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/ex-vj_sentenced_for_secret_sex_tapes/9484082
It happened to me. A long, long time ago an ex boyfriend confessed months after we broke up that he had secretly filmed us having sex. I didn’t even believe him until he literally showed me a clip. I was shocked. I asked him to delete/destroy any video and he swore too but I’m not naive enough to think he actually did.
So yeah, I can’t believe people think this doesn’t happen.
No, I don’t think anything about this is “fishy” or odd “timing” in the slightest and I think that’s a pretty awful victim-blaming thing to say,
She evidently has metal health issues and I sounds like two sexual predators colluded to exploit that by targeting her as a crime victim.
By no means does she need to hide away, and good for her for shaming her would-be blackmailers…but Dr.Phil? She got plenty of coverage from her news conference. This seems ill-advised.
One bit of news that slipped by me, her $7 million mansion in foreclosure finally sold. So she’s living in an apartment and her parents are living who knows where. That’s a long fall, and reason number 243456 that young actors need non-family business managers and personal finance classes.
Why appear on Dr. Phil? The guy is also exploitative. Mischa was one of my style icon during her OC days. I used to collect clippings of her because I just love her look so I would read stuff about her. She has been exploited by people around her (family members, talent agents, friends). One of the reasons of her undoing was when DM published a pic of her showing her cellulites. Like Lilo, she is not without fault. But unlike Lilo, she isn’t given that many chances.
Great comparison to Lilo. I always feel for this poor woman. Why doesn’t she get the 8MM chances Lilo does? I wish she could find some peace.
No offense to Mischa, but she was not a beloved child star like Lilo. She didn’t have a string of hit movies like Lilo. She didn’t have major directors/stars as connections who were willing to give her repeated chances. All I ever knew Mischa from was television: the OC and before that a really minor role on Once and Again. She probably did not/does not have enough industry connections or star power to get back up.
She ruined her own reputation on the OC. She was supposed to be horrible to work with.
Dr Phil’s hair and make up team better get awards bc they make the guests look really good
I agree. On a shallow note, she looks great on his show.
I thought she looked the best she has in so long. But….is the hairsprayed up bangs back in style? Cuz I have a cowlick that was hot in the 90s & has been waiting to make a comeback.
Oh my god. Look, I’m no fan, but I know she has had issues for years. This is a whole different thing. F-ing pigs (no that’s an insult to pigs). What trash to do this to anyone. I hope she gets things to a better place in her life, and these people need jail time. WHEN WILL WOMEN GET SOME RIGHTEOUS JUSTICE DAMMIT?! Brava to her for speaking out and holding her head up.
I don’t think this should be called a Sex Tape. A sex tape implies it was something you made knowingly. She was secretly filmed without her consent via hidden camera. That isn’t a sex tape.
Also an ex did this to me. I was SHOCKED when I found out. He never tried to black mail me or anything but I am still stunned he did that. It was a long, long time ago.
I’ve literally scoured bedrooms making sure laptops were closed, computers were shut down, just making sure nothing with a little red light would suddenly appear (bc you just never really know what someone is really capable of doing). I know there are so many ways to hide a cam, even in teddy bears & that’s a super frightening thought when you don’t WANT to be recorded. It’s a HUGE violation of a person’s trust. Like those creeps who put cams in bathroom stalls/dressing rooms. It’s sick, disgusting, degrading & dehumanizing. I really do hope her violators are prosecuted…..bc let’s say she consented to the recording, she clearly never consented for it to be sold for public viewing. Lock those bastards up & every other bastard who thinks it’s ok to violate & distribute people’s private moments
Doing it in the dark.