The Victims of Trolls, Pervs, and Stalkers Deserve Payouts
If my client was harmed, someone needs to pay
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My name is Carrie Goldberg and I’m a victims’ rights lawyer. Some people call me a “passionate advocate” or a “social justice warrior.” I’d rather be called a ruthless motherfucker. I operate my firm, C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, with one fundamental rule: if one of my clients has been harmed, somebody must pay. It’s as simple as that.
My clients — I represent everyone from successful businesspeople to struggling students — have endured unimaginable offenses. One of my first clients was a 17‐year‐old girl coerced into performing sex acts by a man she’d met online. Another client was being impersonated online by a vindictive boyfriend who posted my client’s phone number and work address promoting her as a sex worker and inviting men over for sex. They’ve been assaulted, stalked, threatened, raped, and extorted. As a result of these crimes, some of my clients have lost their jobs or been forced to leave school, their entire lives and careers upended.
In the first five years of its existence, my firm has secured more than 100 orders of protection and removed more than 30,000 nonconsensual images and videos from the web. We’ve had more than a dozen offenders arrested and thrown in jail. Along with other advocates, we’ve pushed for legislative change to keep the public safe.
We’ve also obtained millions of dollars in financial recoveries for our clients.
I know it’s crude to put a price tag on suffering, but sometimes it’s the only way to make things right. The idea is that the dollar amount should be enough to make a victim “whole.” Money won’t take away pain. But it makes life easier for victims and punishes offenders, making them feel some of the pain.
I have known this since the earliest days of my career when I was a caseworker for a Holocaust survivors program in New York City known as Selfhelp. My clients were in their late seventies and eighties. Their spouses and friends were dead or dying. Their bodies were failing them. For people who’d survived the Holocaust, especially those who’d been in the camps, aging is different than it is for the general population. In captivity, physical health meant survival. The awareness that…
