Who is Charlotte Laws, The Woman Who Helped Take Down Hunter Moore?

Hunter Moore didn’t think there were be any consequences for plastering naked photos of people all over his website without their consent, but he made the mistake of messing with Charlotte Laws' family.

“The Most Hated Man on the Internet,” a new Netflix three-part docuseries, dives into Moore’s IsAnyoneUp.com, the first infamous revenge porn website. Launched in 2010, the site encouraged people to anonymously upload naked or pornographic photos of other people. Not only did folks have images of their naked bodies posted on his site without their consent, but Moore would link to their social media pages.

One of the many victims was Kayla Laws, whose pictures were posted on the site in 2010. In the docuseries, she explains that she took the intimate photos in the privacy of her own bedroom and then emailed them to herself because her phone had run out of storage. 

She and her mother, Charlotte, soon concluded that she had been hacked. After enlisting her husband,  English lawyer Charles Parselle, they put enough pressure on Moore to take the images of her daughter down from his site.

However, Charlotte was not satisfied. She was disturbed that there were so many other victims, who did not have a lawyer in the family to help them. As the docuseries details, she reached out to media and law enforcement after she herself conducted her own investigation. She contacted at least 40 other victims who had never even sent their nudes to another person. At this point, she was convinced that there was a hacking scheme connected to the site. And while revenge porn was not yet illegal at this point in time, hacking and theft certainly was. 

As the docuseries shows, she provided the FBI information on Moore and the many victims she talked to. And, the FBI was both grateful and impressed, as the series shows. 

Moore was arrested in 2014 on charges of conspiracy, unauthorized access to a protected computer and aggravated identity theft, Newsweek reports. He pleaded guilty one year later to felony charges for aggravated identity theft and aiding and abetting in the unauthorized access of a computer. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and was released in 2017. His supervised probation ended last year. 

Charles Evans, who assisted in the hacking scheme, admitted to stealing hundreds of images of women by hacking into their email accounts, Newsweek reports. Evans, who was arrested at the same time, pleaded guilty to charges of computer hacking and identity theft. He was sentenced to two years behind bars.

Charlotte, now a celebrated anti-revenge porn activist, told Newsweek that she hopes the new docuseries will help "push Congress" into making revenge porn a national crime. Currently, revenge porn is banned in most states across the country, but not all. Laws has been part of that movement to get it banned in numerous states. For example, testified before the California State Senate in 2013 in favor of a law to support victims of revenge porn in that state, Newsweek notes.

Laws, a former actor who performed under the stage name Missy Laws, has also worked in public service. She was a member of the Greater Valley Glen Council in Valley Glen, California, serving four two-year terms between 2004 and 2012.

Laws is also the founder and president of the Directors of Animal Welfare (DAW) and the League for Earth and Animal Protection (LEAP); both organizations advocate for the rights of animals.

In the late 1980s, Laws appeared on Larry King Live and Oprah Winfrey to promote her 1988 book “Meet the Stars,” in which she instructed readers on how to get ahead in the entertainment industry. Laws is the author of several books, including the 2015 memoir “Rebel in High Heels,” which chronicles her takedown of Moore.