New Jersey teacher who shared ‘revenge porn’ pics of former student ordered to pay victim $10K, may still be teaching

A New Jersey teacher who shared pornographic pictures of his former student online in 2018 has been ordered to pay the victim $10,000, and he is apparently still teaching.

“It’s my opinion that he shouldn’t be allowed to teach in schools,” his victim told Fox News Thursday. “That’s something that’s important to me. It doesn’t sit right, I guess.”

Christopher Doyle taught freshmen math at Wall High School in New Jersey from 2004 to 2019. In August, a court ordered him to pay his former student, Kaitlyn Cannon, $10,000 in damages in a partial summary judgment.

Cannon discovered her private images had been posted online in 2018 after receiving an alarming social media message from a former classmate at Wall. She had graduated college and was working as a television producer in North Carolina at the time.

Cannon says the intimate images were originally shared with a boyfriend, and over three years prior to being shared online without her knowledge or consent. She doesn’t know how Doyle gained access to the images, but she says her former boyfriend lost his phone sometime after she shared the images with him. 

Those images, she learned, were then uploaded to an online message board where users commonly share “revenge porn,” or images and videos shared online without the depicted person’s knowledge or consent. 

In all, 14 nude or semi-nude pictures, some of which clearly showed her face, had been shared on the site. Making matters worse, Cannon was identified on the site by her first name, last initial and her hometown. 

Even still, it was the proximity of her abuser which was perhaps most alarming for her. Doyle had not only taught Cannon in 2009, when she was just 14; he was also her sister’s tennis coach.  

“I think, for me, it was already something that I was dealing with and struggling with, that these photos were online that I didn’t intend for anyone to see,” she told Fox News. “Once I found out that it was my former math teacher, it was extremely unsettling. It hit a lot closer to home. It made me feel… scared, paranoid, violated that someone in my real life was doing this. I just imagined before it was someone I didn’t know.” 

After the images were posted online, Cannon reportedly began receiving “vaguely threatening” emails and social media messages that were “sexual in nature.” She also says her family began receiving disturbing phone calls. One particular call to her grandmother was especially troubling. 

“I don’t know what was said during them. My grandma… received [a] phone call. She wouldn’t repeat what was said – it made her uncomfortable.” 

After being suspended over the incident in April 2019, Doyle reportedly resigned from his position at Wall. However, Fox reports he was hired by Perth Amboy High School, just one county away, later that year. Records indicate he was still teaching at Perth this semester. 

The district reportedly told Fox on Friday that Doyle was “not an employee in the district.” Still, Fox says he was listed as an employee on the district’s website that same day. 

Fox reports neither Doyle nor his attorney could be reached for comment regarding his employment status. 

Prior to his suspension from Wall, it appears Doyle posted a mea culpa of sorts on Facebook. 

“[I’m] usually a pretty private person so not a lot of you know the issues I’ve dealt with, the troubles I’ve had or the mistakes I’ve made,” he wrote. “Everyone makes mistakes in their life. Everyone makes a bad decision here and there… You never know what someone else is going through that leads them to act the way they do. This doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person, just someone who made a mistake.  
 
“For any of you I have hurt, or you perceived that I hurt, I am truly sorry and I can only hope you can forgive me as well.” 

Doyle’s defense attorney, James Uliano, seemed to excuse his behavior in a statement to Fox on Thursday, saying the court found his client “did not intentionally inflict emotional distress upon [Cannon]…[and] declined to award [Cannon] any punitive damages.”  

He also reiterated his client’s claim that the images had already been posted online when Doyle shared them. 

“The $10,000 reward was reasonable considering the evidence presented in the trial, including the testimony that the subject pictures were previously on the internet,” he wrote. 

Cali Madia, Cannon’s attorney, told Fox most victims of revenge porn “never find out who posted their images [online].” In Cannon’s case, Madia says the network provider which hosts the site in question only provided the user’s IP address, revealing Doyle as the user who shared the images, after subpoenas were issued. 

She also refuted Doyle’s claim the images were already online when he shared them, telling Fox her law firm “never found any other instance of [these] image[s] being posted.” 

Madia says the issue of revenge porn is becoming more pervasive, and affects all kinds of people. 

“This happens every day and it happens to people that you wouldn’t expect – former judges, older people who you may not picture taking intimate content of themselves… We receive multiple calls every day from people who are going through this.” 

In fact, the issue has become so prevalent Congress added a provision to the Violence Against Women Act last year, allowing victims like Cannon to sue their abusers in federal court for damages of $150,000 plus attorney’s fees and other costs. Since Cannon’s incident happened prior to the passage of the new provision, it has no bearing on her case. 

Since the harrowing ordeal, Cannon has received a master’s of social work and changed careers. Now, she uses her experience and training to bring awareness to the issue and help others like her overcome the traumatic effects of “image-based sexual abuse.” 

“It’s important to me to speak out about it because for me when I was trying to navigate this – I didn’t find a ton of resources. I think it’s something that people are not really talking about. To me, a large part of the advocacy is just to bring attention to the fact that this kind of stuff happens.”