Leigh Nicol is one of four British women suing the website Pornhub over leaked sexual content.
The Crystal Palace midfielder is among those claiming the site published sex videos without consent. The women filed a 179-page lawsuit against Pornhub’s parent company, Mindgeek, in California on June 18 — a legal process that was a year in the making, The Sun reported.
In the spring of 2019, an iCloud hack led to a leakage of private content of Nicol and others, and wound up published on Pornhub’s website, the suit contends.
The images of Nicol date back to 2014, when she was 18 years old.
The soccer player shared a photo of an official statement on Friday regarding the lawsuit and detailed how the traumatic experience still affects her life.
“It ruined my life, it kills my personality, it zapped the happiness out of me,” Nicol wrote.
The 25-year-old experienced “two years of shame” after the video leak that left her suffering from “depression, anxiety, horrifying thoughts public embarrassment and scars,” she wrote.
“I still bear those scars,” she wrote.
Nicol said she’s in an ongoing mental-health battle “for the foreseeable future” and wants to be part of the fight to make sure others don’t experience what she did.
The explicit video of Nicol was removed by Pornhub after she sent “numerous emails” to the website and received “generic, automated responses,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also states that Nicol was forced to step away from professional soccer for a year as a result of her mental health issues and trauma.
Nicol still suffers “significant emotional harm, including anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and panic attacks” as a result of the incident, according to the lawsuit.
Three other women are part of the lawsuit filed Thursday, and according to The Sun, 34 women in total made complaints.
Among the accusers, 14 of them were underage when the videos were published and another 14 were the victims of convicted sex criminals, The Sun reported.
Nicol, in her Instagram post, added, “Thank you to you all, my family, friends, colleagues, lawyers and you.”
