How Online Predators Exploited Former Gay Weatherman with Explicit Photos
Share
The former NY1 Weatherman who was fired for online sexcapades is speaking out against and about online predators who are blackmailing with illegally recorded videos of him allegedly performing sexual acts and using drugs.
View this post on Instagram
In a video posted to Instagram this week, former Spectrum News NY1 meteorologist Erick Adame said the headlines surrounding his departure from NY1 gave “sexual predators the idea that I wanted to be exploited and humiliated.” Adame alleged these online predators are trying to obtain and potentially even make money off of his private adult content that was recorded without his knowledge.
“A lot of these people are just out there searching the internet trying to find whatever pictures or videos of me that they can possibly find,” Adame said. “I never wanted any of those images or videos to ever be recorded or kept or saved or shared in any way, and I don’t want any kind of this attention that I’ve been receiving. What I do want is for these people to leave me alone.”
In a message shared with NBC News Tuesday evening, Adame said dealing with the fallout of “having explicit images and videos of me being shared without my consent, and a very public termination have been the hardest experiences of my life.” But he said he also wanted to speak out because “there’s a bigger story out there than me on webcam”: Adame said “people are being exploited like this every single day” by having their private webcam sessions secretly recorded and distributed without their consent.
In fact, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center issued a warning in September 2021 about a “large increase in the number of sextortion complaints.” Sextortion, it says, is when someone “threatens to distribute your private and sensitive material if their demands are not met.” The bureau said it received over 16,000 such complaints in the first seven months of 2021, with nearly half of the alleged victims in the 20 to 39 age group. Just last month, the FBI issued a separate warning about sextortion of minors, particularly teen boys. (While Adame said his images were recorded and distributed without his consent, he said he was not extorted.)
