00:00:01
To be honest with you, I just looked at the phone and I said, "Nothing is that important at 6:00 in the morning." and I
00:00:06
turned it off. Monika Glennon grew up in Poland, but today she lives in Huntsville, Alabama,
00:00:13
where she works as a real estate agent with RE/MAX. At 6:00 in the morning in September of
00:00:19
2015, she got repeated phone calls and texts from a colleague. And I thought, oh,
00:00:27
maybe a bad review. I mean, so many years in real estate, 16 years in real estate, it eventually was going to
00:00:33
happen. I'm not perfect here. And I called her up and she says, "You don't understand." So, she sent me
00:00:40
screenshots of what was posted on the RE/MAX Facebook page and also was sent to the RE/MAX corporate office.
00:00:48
And I have to tell you, I I think honestly I went into shock. Everything seemed to kind of close in
00:00:55
and I started reading it and it was so awful. >> [music] >> It was a link to an anonymous post. It
00:01:03
had also been sent to Monika's friends [music] and members of her family and directly to her husband, Scott Glennon,
00:01:10
>> [music] >> with the message, "Sorry to be the one to let you in on this." This lady
00:01:14
claimed that her and her husband have hired me [music] as a realtor. And um you know, she wanted to see a
00:01:23
home and she couldn't make it, so [music] she went ahead told her husband to go with me and go take a look at the
00:01:29
house. >> [music] >> So, um she said all of a sudden she was able to make it, so she drove over to
00:01:36
the house >> [music] >> and she ended up walking in. She saw both of our cars. She walked in and she
00:01:41
found me and her husband having sex on the floor. And that [music] she has pictures of all
00:01:50
of that and nobody should ever hire me as a realtor because I'm an enemy of all decent women out there.
00:01:59
>> [music] >> The anonymous poster began by saying she and her husband had been happy working
00:02:05
with Monika. That she'd shown them eight to 10 houses. On the day of the alleged incident,
00:02:11
[music] the anonymous poster had admired the granite countertops and gas stove in
00:02:16
the house before walking in on her husband and Monika on the {quote} plush white
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carpet. From there, it becomes graphic. And I live in Bible Belt. And um and I did think that um she definitely
00:02:34
used the kind of story that could be very believable to people. At the end, the anonymous poster writes,
00:02:42
"She knew he was married." And in all caps, "Do not use this person as a realtor."
00:02:50
Then, they included a large photo of Monika along with all of her contact information. [music]
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I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. >> [music] >> I was still sleeping. Uh and then she came in and woke me up
00:03:12
and said, "You need to see this." And so I I walked outside. She already had her computer fired up and had the
00:03:18
story pulled up on the website. Monika's husband, Scott Glennon. So, I read the story and then
00:03:25
you know, I yeah, I definitely wanted to find out who did it and [music] and you know,
00:03:32
let's just call it have words with them. Did you for a second when you first read
00:03:36
the post think, "What has she done?" >> No, not not for a minute. Not not for a minute.
00:03:44
There's just no way. The link had been shared all over Facebook by someone named Ryan Baxter.
00:03:51
Scott and Monika had no idea who Ryan Baxter was. It was a link to a website called
00:03:59
shesahomewrecker.com. The site's tagline is, "Did you think it would stay a secret?"
00:04:06
Everything on shesahomewrecker.com is posted anonymously. Anyone can submit an entry accusing anyone else of being a
00:04:15
so-called homewrecker. The entries have photos of the accused women's faces, their full names, where
00:04:22
they live. Some say where they work. In most cases, the posts are short. Things like, "This girl is 27 years old
00:04:31
and sleeping with my 54-year-old husband." And "She'll go to the ends of the earth to ruin a marriage. Ladies,
00:04:39
watch out." The post about Monika was much longer. It was full of details. The the damage,
00:04:47
you know, was immediate and it was severe. Before the story came out, I think she had like 20
00:04:52
22 23 active listings. A week later it was down to four. The phone calls were coming in every day of
00:04:59
people just pulling their listings away. And it wasn't just the business side of
00:05:03
that, it was the the self-confidence hit. So, you know, she'd be talking to them on the phone and I'm watching her
00:05:09
talk to them on the phone. I can't hear the other end, but I can see her. And she's nodding her head a lot and she's
00:05:16
using her cheerful real estate voice going, "I'm I'm so happy for you." and you can just watch the confidence just
00:05:22
draining from her. Scott says he and Monika had hoped this would become old news and they could
00:05:28
move on. But it didn't go away. The damage kept coming. The phone calls kept coming.
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Creepy men from somewhere in the country that would just breathe heavy or that would
00:05:38
ask for a hookup and things like [clears throat] that. So, we couldn't ignore it.
00:05:44
Uh it was just too big a a thing. Did you suspect people in your life? I did. I did. And as you just starting looking
00:05:54
around and going, >> [music] >> "Could it be this friend? Maybe she was mad about something. Maybe a rival
00:06:02
realtor." That was actually my biggest guess. [music] Uh you know, I had to look at everybody
00:06:06
around me and kind of say, "Could it be the [music] person?" You know, it's really funny, but we even
00:06:12
talked saying, "What if one of my children did it cuz they got mad at me?" >> [music]
00:06:16
>> But you know, your mind just starts wondering in every direction and it's an awful way to live.
00:06:22
We found ourselves questioning, you know, all of my friends and business contacts,
00:06:27
all of her friends and business contacts, all of her mutual friends, all of our family [clears throat] members.
00:06:32
We didn't know who did it, so we found ourselves questioning every human relationship in our lives.
00:06:39
When you stop trusting every human in your life, you know, that's a that's a big problem.
00:06:45
So, we we couldn't ignore it. We had to find out who did it just for the sake of
00:06:49
sanity. But you know, the whole time I I was thinking it must be somebody I've had
00:06:55
contact with. Maybe somebody I did a deal with. Somebody that I crossed paths with.
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It did not make any sense. That story was so mean and so personal, we figured it had to be somebody we knew.
00:07:09
There's no way a stranger would go to that length. RE/MAX deleted the post from their
00:07:13
Facebook page right away. But it was still up on shesahomewrecker.com. Monika emailed the website and sent a
00:07:23
message to their Facebook page asking them to take the entry down. I was very naive. Um I thought if you tell people
00:07:31
this is not true, then they're going to go ahead and take it down. And um I just got one answer
00:07:38
from the Facebook whoever is in charge of the their Facebook that said that they will look into my case and that was
00:07:44
the last I've ever heard from them. And I thought all it's going to take is [music] cease and desist letter. So, I
00:07:51
had an attorney generate that letter and I right away signed [music] it and I sent it over to shesahomewrecker.
00:07:58
Um and I got no response. I just could feel that this is not going to end well when [music] I was starting to get
00:08:07
no responses from those websites. I'm like, this is going to What am I going to do?
00:08:13
Not only could [music] she not get anyone to remove it from shesahomewrecker, but the post, along with Monika's name
00:08:20
and picture, was picked up by similar websites designed to shame people. One called badbizreport
00:08:29
says, "There's no way in hell to get off of badbizreport and >> [music] >> American lawyers make us laugh."
00:08:38
As the post about Monika was picked up by other sites, it moved higher up search engine algorithms. So, when
00:08:46
people in Huntsville, Alabama saw a for sale sign in a yard and Googled Monika Glennon, that's what they saw. And they
00:08:54
ended up becoming number one search result of my name. And basically destroying my reputation.
00:09:04
Uh I don't think I stopped crying for >> [music] >> weeks. I walked around and I felt like I walked
00:09:09
around with a scarlet letter on my chest. Um you know, and a lot of people were making really awful comments saying,
00:09:16
"Hey, you know, if there is [music] a smoke, there is a fire. For sure she did it." Um I thought, "Oh my goodness,
00:09:23
what's going to happen is some [music] crazy men out there are going to make appointment with me just thinking that's
00:09:29
what's going to happen when we when we end up, you know, when I show a house." So, we decided [music] we going
00:09:37
to go ahead and priority number one, find out who did it. I don't want to walk for the rest of
00:09:43
my life wondering who did that to me. They found a lawyer in Huntsville named George Kopel. He was literally the
00:09:52
lawyer that would take the case. Nobody else would take it. Uh maybe was just the only guy crazy enough
00:09:57
to take it, but everybody we talked to said, "No, I'm not touching it." The problem with Monica's case was that it's
00:10:03
extremely difficult to compel a website to remove something one of its users posted.
00:10:10
She's a homewrecker.com, along with websites like Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter,
00:10:16
are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which shields them from liability.
00:10:25
It's been called the most important law protecting internet speech. For example,
00:10:32
if someone posts a death threat against someone else on Facebook, Facebook isn't responsible.
00:10:39
As of very recently, Section 230 no longer protects sites responsible for and that profit from content related to
00:10:47
sex trafficking. She's a homewrecker says in their terms of service that false, defamatory
00:10:55
material is prohibited. We contacted them for this story, but haven't heard back.
00:11:02
Monica and Scott knew that George Kobler wasn't going to be able to sue the website to get the post removed.
00:11:09
But what he could do was file a lawsuit against the person who wrote the post about Monica,
00:11:17
even without knowing who it was. George took the case. Um, his idea was to use the fact that her
00:11:25
professional photo was taken as a way to get it into the federal courts because he felt that this would
00:11:31
get more traction in federal court than in state court. So, we sued for both libel and for copyright
00:11:37
infringement, and it worked. It got into the federal courts. Whoever wrote the entry uploaded the
00:11:44
same photo Monica used on her business cards and real estate signs. Monica owns the copyright, and anyone
00:11:53
posting the photo without her permission is breaking the law. Attorney George Kobler. And then we had
00:12:00
to find the identity of John Doe by uh, issuing having the court issue a subpoena to the website
00:12:08
to find out where the post came from or which internet service provider uh, allowed that post to go through.
00:12:16
Um, and then we had to issue a subpoena to the internet service provider to um, find out who the individual was.
00:12:25
Uh, in other words, the internet service provider customer that that uh, uh, that put up that post.
00:12:34
So, a judge can compel someone to reveal IP addresses and then names. Yes. Yes. This isn't that easy to do.
00:12:46
Courts have to balance a user's right to say what they want against the damage their comments may cause.
00:12:52
It's usually pretty difficult to prove that the damage of a critical [music] comment outweighs a person's right to
00:12:58
free speech, but not always. So, whatever we think we're saying anonymously online could be traced back
00:13:07
to us. That's what happened in Monica's case. And we found out [music] that this this
00:13:13
person who wrote it was a woman who lives in Athens, just about 45 minutes from here. Did you know her? No. I have
00:13:21
never met her in my life. A total stranger. >> [music] >> It took a long, long time to finally
00:13:40
figure out who done it. And then when it turned out to be a complete stranger, we
00:13:45
were we were both flabbergasted. It just did not make any sense. The stranger's name was Molly Rosenblum.
00:13:52
And while she and Monica had never been in the same room, they had interacted before, kind of.
00:14:00
Years earlier, in 2014, an Alabama teenager posted a photo of herself at Auschwitz.
00:14:08
In the photo, the teenager is smiling. The caption says, "Selfie in the Auschwitz concentration camp."
00:14:16
And then, she posted a smiling emoji. The photo went viral, and the teenager was harshly criticized.
00:14:25
She responded saying she'd always wanted to visit with her late father, and that
00:14:30
they'd studied World War II together. That made things worse. A local television station in Alabama
00:14:37
posted a story about the teenager on Facebook and asked readers to share their thoughts.
00:14:44
Some people commented on the post sticking up for the teenager. Monica was one of them. I just said
00:14:51
teenagers do really stupid stuff, and all she is is a teenager. There's no need to go after this girl. So, I
00:14:57
defended her. Molly interpreted that uh, as so inappropriate that she went online
00:15:04
and attacked my wife uh, with that story. So, I angered her so much that she ended up
00:15:12
spending couple hours figuring out who I was, where I worked, where I lived, and
00:15:17
she wrote it, and she forgot I existed. When Monica learned the name Molly Rosenblum, she searched for her on
00:15:25
Facebook. And then, against the advice of her attorney, Monica reached out to Molly
00:15:31
directly. I ended up Facebook messaging her saying, "Look, this this story this has done such a
00:15:39
huge damage to me. It's just getting ridiculous. What what is it that you want from me? Let's meet. Ask me
00:15:46
anything you want to ask me, and I'll answer all your questions, cuz this is crazy."
00:15:52
And she agreed. The two women met at a diner for breakfast. Monica was nervous. Her
00:15:58
husband drove her and waited in the car. When Molly walked in, Monica recognized
00:16:04
her from Facebook right away. They sat down. Monica was too uncomfortable to eat.
00:16:12
Molly told Monica that she assumed from their exchange on Facebook that Monica was a neo-Nazi.
00:16:19
Monica told her that wasn't true. So, she started asking me questions, and I explained to her um,
00:16:26
what who I was, what kind of person I was. Um, and uh, she told me about her life.
00:16:34
Molly told Monica that she'd been through a lot. She'd lost her husband. She'd had a long-term struggle with
00:16:41
drugs. They talked about politics and books and growing up. So, it was a very long
00:16:48
meeting, and I cried, and she cried, and she said I was a kind person that she wishes she knew
00:16:57
what I was like back then. Um, and she promised right away to take everything down from online. However, I already
00:17:03
knew she couldn't. There's no deleting posts on these sites, even if you're the person who
00:17:08
wrote them. So, she went online, and she made apologies um, on all those sites. [music]
00:17:17
Molly Rosenblum wrote the she's a homewrecker post, but as Monica discovered, she wasn't the
00:17:24
person who spread it on Facebook. That person, Ryan Baxter, turned out to be another complete stranger, unknown
00:17:34
[music] to both Molly and Monica. Ryan Baxter was the fake persona [music] of a 20-year-old woman in California who
00:17:44
Monica describes >> [music] >> as a kind of vigilante. So, you can see actually Ryan [music] Baxter taking multiple
00:17:52
stories off of she's a homewrecker, and even making comments [music] under the stories that say somebody needs to tell
00:17:59
the employer, somebody needs to get this person fired, somebody needs to tell the
00:18:03
husband. >> [music] >> Kind of, you know, um, basically taking over as a person who is going to set this right
00:18:10
for the family, and shame that person. >> [music] >> It's amazing that a a stranger can
00:18:17
totally ruin your life in the middle of the night with you [music] completely not being aware, and then all of the
00:18:22
sudden I find it outrageous, and I am >> [music] >> I just don't know how this is still
00:18:29
allowable. >> [music] >> And anybody can do this to anybody. In the end, Monica [music] says she lost
00:18:37
about half her income. She's been slowly rebuilding her business. The post is no longer on she's a
00:18:44
homewrecker.com, in its place is a legal notice indicating that the claims made about
00:18:51
Monica were false and constitute defamation. [music] But the post wasn't removed because of
00:18:58
legal action. It was removed because Monica kept writing to the site's owners asking them to take it down, and that
00:19:06
worked. The post still lives online because other sites reposted it, including Bad
00:19:14
Biz Report, the one that says American lawyers make them laugh. Monica's working with attorney George
00:19:21
Kobler to see what she can do. If she can't force the site to take the post down, she'd like it to be de-indexed
00:19:28
from search engines. That's very difficult. And Monica says she's already spent more than $130,000
00:19:36
in legal fees. Do you still comment on news articles on Facebook? Yeah, a little bit.
00:19:44
>> [laughter] >> It hasn't stopped you. So, I do comment once in a while, but I really, really
00:19:49
stay away from controversial subjects. I really do. Has it changed how you feel when you hear gossip about other people?
00:19:57
Yes, I actually I get actually very upset. I I had couple comments I've made to my friends before saying it really
00:20:05
doesn't matter because it really doesn't. If the story is true, let's just say infidelity.
00:20:12
Um whether the story is true or it's not true, it is nobody's business. And people just need to stop being those
00:20:19
keyboard heroes behind a computer screen and do this to people. It's just not right. This is their lives. This is
00:20:26
their business. It's their their families. If I had any reason to believe that infidelity could be true, this might
00:20:33
have been enough to break up the marriage. I didn't, but you know, in a in a if the marriage were
00:20:39
different, if we'd had some infidelity in the past or something, and if I had some reason to believe it, this could
00:20:44
have been enough to kill it, right? >> [music] >> Has this changed anything about your
00:20:50
marriage, this whole experience? Yeah, it's changed uh >> [music] >> So, let's go good and bad. Uh
00:21:00
it's good in the sense that, you know, we know we can we've persevered things before that we've persevered this now as
00:21:06
well. So, it's made us stronger. It's made us closer and >> [music] >> the number of hours that we spent
00:21:11
talking about it has put us more in touch with each other's feelings. So, that's a a very positive thing.
00:21:17
>> [clears throat] >> On the negative side, um >> [music] >> you know, the girl I married
00:21:22
had this belief that if she just lived her life a certain way and treated people a certain [music] way, that all
00:21:27
the good she was putting out would bring good back. Uh this has shattered that belief and she's
00:21:33
never going to believe that again. So, there've been real changes to her and even though her self-esteem has mostly
00:21:40
recovered from this, there are still little moments where I can see that it still
00:21:46
you know, it still hurts. There's still a scar there. >> [music] [music] >> Criminal is [music] created by Lauren
00:22:01
Spor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. >> [music] >> Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks
00:22:09
to Suzanna Roberson and Kashmir Hill at Gizmodo. [music] We have a link to her reporting about
00:22:14
Monica in the show notes. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of
00:22:21
Criminal. [music] You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter at
00:22:26
criminalshow. Criminal is recorded in the studios [music] of North Carolina Public
00:22:31
Broadcasting, WUNC. We're proud member of Radiotopia [music] from PRX, a collection of the best
00:22:39
podcasts around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Radiotopia
00:23:01
>> [music] >> from PRX