In order for a cheerleading rival squad to get kicked off of their team, a mother allegedly recreated evidence that contained fake recordings and videos that were realistic.
Cyberbullying is taken to another level by exploiting evidence that is false, Raffaela Spone, took effort to take girls kicked off of Chalfont’s cheerleading team, the Victory Vipers.
Spone has a daughter of her own, also a cheerleader, who she wanted to win in games. The mother has been accused for manipulating photos she had gotten ahold from the girls’ social media platforms. With her access, she had made it look as if they were smoking and drinking, even altered to make it seem like they were naked.
According to Matt Weintraub, Bucks County District Attorney, “The suspect is alleged to have taken a real picture and edited it through some photoshopping app to make it look like this teenaged girl had no clothes on to appear nude, when in reality that picture was a screengrab from the teenager’s social media in which she had a bathing suit on.”
Madi Hime, 16 at the time, was one of the victims of the deepfake videos.point 162 | She is seen “vaping” in the following screenshots.point 217 |
Appearing on Good Morning America with her mother, she mentions how she was crying since it was not her in the video.point 96 | Hime had a falling out with Spone’s daughter, receiving text messages from an anonymous number threatening to kill herself and so forth.point 217 | 1
Robert Birch, Raffaela Spone’s attorney, did not comment since there was no evidence that had been presented to him that ruled out the possibility of the girl in the video not being Madi Hime.
Soon after, Spone had been charged with cyber harassment of a child due to Hime being underage at the time. The Victory Vipers had released a statement to 6ABC that they had been co-operative with police investigation, emphasizing how they have a “very strict anti-bullying policy.”
The spread of this news called for Robert D’Ovidio, Drexel University Associate Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, to warn parents of how images and videos can be altered just with the access of social media. It is “a classic example of an innocent technology being adopted by people for criminal purposes.”
Replaced!