The Revenge Porn Warrior

Attorney Carrie Goldberg Has Made A Name For Herself Defending Victims Of Online Harassment And Vengeful Exes. Now The High-Profile Lawyer Is Opening Up About The Abuse She Suffered Along The Way. By Jessica Testa

“Holy Shit.” It’s been a week since Carrie Goldberg submitted a final draft of her book, but when I ask how she feels about it and she says “holy shit,” it’s not out of excitement. Nor is it that she’s feeling stunned, or proud, or relieved. At one point she’d felt all those things, but right now Goldberg is mostly experiencing dread—a nerve-racking, “holy shit” kind of dread.

“There’s gonna be, in August, all these people who know my shit,” she says. “The darkest moment in my life, it’s just gonna be out there. Which is super liberating, but it’s just fucking with me.”

Goldberg is a 42-year-old attorney based in Brooklyn. Her law firm specializes in representing victims of “psychos, stalkers, pervs, and trolls,” as she calls them. Each case is different, but usually this means Goldberg is working with women who’ve been hurt by men, often in ways facilitated by technology. (She also has male clients but, predictably, not as many.) After opening her firm in 2014, Goldberg began working on cases involving revenge porn, helping victims scrub the internet of nudes posted online without their consent. While her practice has since grown significantly, along with Goldberg’s national reputation as a tech-savvy, somewhat foul-mouthed legal avenger, one thing hasn’t changed: Her clients know all about having their darkest moments “out there.” Many of them didn’t have a choice. Goldberg, however, is willingly giving up her secrets.