Former Virginia House of Delegates candidate Susanna Gibson, a Democrat, has broken her silence regarding the explicit videos of her and her husband engaging in sexual acts online that surfaced before her election loss earlier this year. In an interview with Politico, Gibson lamented the invasion of her privacy and accused Republican operatives of orchestrating a smear campaign against her. The videos, which were archived on a website called Chaturbate in September 2022, gained attention after being shared by the Washington Post, who ran a headline stating that the Virginia Democrat had performed sex online with her husband for tips.

Gibson, a nurse practitioner and mother of two, insisted that she and her husband only engaged in consensual acts and that they received payments from viewers for specific acts. However, she emphasized that the videos were intended to be private and were never meant for public consumption. Referring to a Dropbox file that was allegedly circulated by self-described Republican operatives, Gibson claimed that she had no prior knowledge of the existence of these videos, stating, "They had found these videos on the dark web and shopped them around to various news outlets. I didn't have any idea that there were ever videos of me that had been made and uploaded to multiple sites."

Expressing her distress and feeling blindsided by the media coverage, Gibson described the emotional toll of discovering the existence of sexually explicit videos of herself online, especially when contacted by national reporters. She stated, "When you find out that there are sexually explicit videos of you online, especially by being contacted by national reporters - it is a feeling that I would not wish on my worst enemy."

Asserting that the distribution of these videos in a non-consensual context constitutes a crime, Gibson criticized the actions of those who shared the content without her consent. She argued that there is a fundamental difference between willingly sharing content with select individuals in a private setting and having that content recorded and widely disseminated. Gibson cited case law precedent to support her claim.

Addressing the broader implications of such invasive scrutiny, Gibson advocated for a clear distinction between individuals' private lives and their professional capabilities. She contended that as long as an individual's actions are legal, consensual, and unrelated to their job performance, their personal lives should not be used against them or affect the way they are perceived by their communities. Gibson warned that the exposure of intimate aspects of individuals' lives, particularly their sexual lives, poses a threat to the future generation of politicians, specifically millennial women, who are increasingly entering the political arena. She referenced a 2014 study by McAfee which revealed that 90 percent of millennial women have taken nude photos at some point, suggesting that similar instances of privacy invasion are likely to occur in the future.