Katherine McClanahan looked at the phone images and saw the familiar curve of her own bed post.
It instantly crushed her.
She had been secretly recorded, with her name and images used to impersonate a porn star on several websites without her consent. Full of shame, she stopped going out of her house, this loving mother and wife of an active-duty military husband, for weeks at a time.
“The pain became so intense, I resorted to compulsive eating and stabbing myself with needles to visualize my anguish and make myself ugly,” she told federal officials in December.
Only one website agreed to take the images down.
That was nine years ago.
McClanahan eventually found the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and learned what had happened to her had a name – image-based sexual abuse. And she found a way to take action as a graduate student at Grand Canyon University.
The research and advocacy encouraged in her graduate social work studies eventually led to changes in Arkansas state law and was part of testimony that helped pass the federal Take It Down Act, which President Donald Trump signed on May 19.
“I wasn’t prepared to take on this, but it takes just one person with a purpose to make change,” she said. “You don’t have to have the qualifications or ability to speak or the letters behind your name. It really just is stepping out your comfort zone, because it is really uncomfortable.”
After years in a fog of shame and therapy, McClanahan decided she needed to be of service to others. Before being a stay-at-home mom, she was a teacher, and a graduate program in social work at GCU sounded like a fit. She could study online and eventually help families in stress.
Dr. Carin Blevins’ first course at GCU changed that. Blevins told her to explore what she was passionate about, and her trauma emerged right away.
Blevins tells her students that social workers can help individuals and families a few at a time, but “in policy and advocacy, you can change things for a lot more people. She is the best example I have of this,” said the faculty lead for the online master’s degree program in social work.
McClanahan, who lives near Little Rock, Arkansas, said she used her research class to learn just how prevalent image-based sexual abuse is – 1 in 10 people have faced the broad range of harmful experiences involving weaponization of sexually explicit or sexualized images or videos. She learned its affects on victims are similar to offline abuse.
She used her policy course to explore Arkansas law on unlawful distribution of sexual images and found it lacking, requiring a relationship with the perpetrator and a need to prove intent.
And she used her field experience internship with ReDiscover Counseling and Wellness to connect with other advocates and learn about state and national laws.
“Tech companies are hiding behind (free speech rights), but if Disney wants something removed it happens in 30 seconds,” McClanahan said. “Abuse material they say that can’t take it down because it violates rights.
“So I was just going to fight to change my little law. That was when I had a new feeling that I hadn’t experienced before – that the root of the problem wasn’t me.
“I never thought social workers did this or that I could do this. I just wanted to be in marriage and family counseling. Yet this can change people in a different way, empower them to change their lives.”
She called her state representative who had backed previous legislation in Arkansas on pornography.
“She brought this idea to me, and I had no idea what she was telling me,” said Arkansas Rep. Karilyn Brown. “But it is happening to regular folks. It can happen to your sister or aunt.”
McClanahan became a witness and advocate on the bill that tightened the loopholes in the law, removing the consent and relationship clauses, and made it a felony. The bill to amend the law on unnlawful distribution of sexual images was signed into Arkansas law in April.
Brown said people come to her all the time with pleas to push new legislation, but McClanahan arrived with not only her personal story but the credibility of research and connections with professional organizations working on the problem.
“Katherine and I are going to continue to work together and try to comb through statutes to see if there are other loopholes,” Brown said.
McClanahan was asked to speak before U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials in December. For the first time she was feeling a sense of community behind her, including the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, even while her image is still being mined off her social media account and updated on porn sites.
She told them about 35 peer-reviewed journal entries that describe how online exploitation causes depression, stress, suicide, relationship problems, obsessive behavior, paranoia and many other issues.
“While I still experience waves of anger and numbness,” she told them, “I have risen from the ashes. I am no longer a victim and not just a survivor. I am a thriver.”
After the federal Take It Down Act recently passed into law, boosting protections for victims of revenge porn and nonconsensual sexual images, and increasing accountability for tech platforms, she sent a note to her professors on how far she has come since finding that passion in her first course.
“Dang, showed us all up,” Blevins said. “Most people write a paper in an MSW, but she helped change law on a federal level, so it’s pretty cool.”
McClanahan hopes to become an advocate and therapist specializing in healing for image-based sexual abuse victims while in the home stretch of her graduate studies.
“You go through something like this, and therapy helps. But knowing this helps other people is almost more healing than anything I could have done,” she said. “There is so much shame and isolation, but the biggest, most empowering thing is recognizing I am not alone. So, I’m hoping people understand: You are not alone.”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
***
Related content:
GCU News: Arizona Capitol trip kindles advocacy in social work students
GCU News: An inaugural social worker's journey, right into humble service
