'Fundamentally changed': Susanna Gibson on how explicit videos being exposed impacted her life, campaign

Susanna Gibson is speaking out after her race for Virginia state Legislature was upended by a report that she and her husband performed sex acts online, which she said were then illegally recorded and published on other sites without her consent.

In an extensive interview with Politico published over the weekend, Gibson described the shock of learning about The Washington Post report and the impact it had not only on her campaign, but also her life.

"I would say I've fundamentally changed as a human, as a professional," she told the media outlet.

Gibson, a nurse practitioner, ran as a Democrat for Virginia's House of Delegates to represent western Richmond. It was one race that would help determine if Republicans or Democrats captured control of the state Legislature -- contests deemed among the most important elections of the 2023 cycle.

Gibson ultimately lost to Republican David Owen by fewer than 1,000 votes, though Democrats still won majority control of the Virginia General Assembly.

She told Politico that while the report about her online activity "shook a lot of people in the political sphere," the closeness of the race suggested voters didn't care as much about it as they did other issues.

The Post reported in September that Gibson livestreamed sex acts with her husband on a platform called Chaturbate and encouraged viewers to pay in "tips" for specific requests. Gibson said the tips or "tokens" were nominal and that she never made any money from the platform.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Gibson said she wasn't ashamed of the original videos streamed on Chaturbate. She said it was a decision made "in the context of my loving marriage."

An unnamed Republican operative alerted The Post to the videos, which were also posted on other publicly available sites. Gibson's attorney told The Post she didn't know and didn't approve of the posting of the Chaturbate videos on other platforms.

Gibson criticized The Post's approach to the story, saying they saw it as a political story "rather than an invasion of my privacy." She also said she is still seeking legal action against the person who recorded and disseminated the videos on various sites, actions she likened to revenge porn.

"A political operative found sexually explicit videos of a young woman running for office that she never knew existed -- and we made that pretty clear in our statement -- and shopped them around to various news outlets, trying to get them published to humiliate, intimidate, coerce, harass this woman, and with the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election that very well could have been the majority maker or breaker for the House," Gibson told Politico.

The Post didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Gibson's statements. The newspaper, in its original report, said it typically wouldn't identify victims of alleged sex crimes -- but in this case Gibson streamed the acts on a site that wasn't password-protected and had thousands of followers.

Speaking to ABC News, Gibson emphasized the need to start "educating our society on the idea of consent" -- especially in the digital age.

"The concept of digital consent and privacy is one that I think really needs to be brought to the table in the forefront of the conversation because this is going to continue to happen as women, and particularly younger women, run for office more and more," she said.

"Choosing to share content with select people, with the understanding that it will disappear and only be seen by those present at that time is a far cry from consenting to that content being recorded and then broadly disseminated," she added. "Content initially made in a consensual context, which has been distributed in a non-consensual context, is a crime and it's never OK."

Gibson has said she is working with some state lawmakers to try to amend Virginia's revenge porn law to strengthen penalties and remove the need to establish intent or motive.

"Who knows if I will run [for office] again, but I am absolutely determined to use whatever platform I have right now to educate and advocate on this particular issue because it's so important," she told ABC News.

"I am not special. I'm really not. This happens to women every day. Mine just happened to play out more publicly than theirs."