Discussion with Woman Wrongly Identified As Kobe Bryant's Accuser
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: While the judge in the Kobe Bryant case is warning the media not to name the accuser, a young woman who has been wrongly identified on the Internet as the alleged victim is trying to get her name and her photograph removed from numerous Web sites. The family of 18-year-old Katie Lovell is fighting mad and they're now considering legal action. Katie joins us this morning along with her mom, Beth Matthews, and her attorney, Sienna Larene. Good morning to all of you and thanks for joining us. I appreciate it. Katie, how are doing? Because this has been a tough couple of weeks for you.</s>KATIE LOVELL, WRONGLY IDENTIFIED AS KOBE BRYANT'S ACCUSER: Yes, it's been really upsetting. When I first learned about it, it wasn't as bad, but then after a couple of days when it had progressively gotten worse and it wasn't on just one Web site anymore, it was on a couple dozen Web sites, that's when it really got upsetting to me.</s>O'BRIEN: How did you first find out that actually it was your face and your body that was on these Web sites?</s>LOVELL: I first found out by a friend of mine who was in a chat room and they were talking about the Kobe Bryant situation. And another person in a chat room said that he had a picture of the accuser. And so they were passing the picture around the chat room, sending it to each other and somebody sent it to him, and when it came up on his screen, he saw that it was me. And so then he forwarded it to me and I found out about it.</s>O'BRIEN: And, Beth, you actually went about trying to set the record straight. You contacted some of the Web sites and said, you know what, I'm this young woman's mother and you're wrong, she is not the accuser in the case. Pretty straightforward. What happened?</s>BETH MATTHEWS, KATIE LOVELL'S MOTHER: Basically some people removed the pictures or they relabeled the pictures. The first couple of days it was kind of well, somebody has come forward and said these pictures are incorrect, believe it or not. So it was still kind of, for the media purposes, you know, not good.</s>O'BRIEN: Some Web sites wouldn't remove it?</s>MATTHEWS: No. And then others wrote back saying bottom line, you have no right to privacy on the Internet. And I went I don't think so.</s>O'BRIEN: And hired yourself an attorney. Sienna, I'm curious to know what happens legally next, because it's so murky, the law and the boundaries of the Internet are limitless. How do you possibly think about how to legally protect your client in this case?</s>SIENNA LARENE, ATTORNEY: Well, it's less than murky. It's almost non-existent. But at least for parents, we do have a formula now. For parents whose child pictures have been taken off of a school Web site in their choir class, their dance class, their prom or maybe scanned off of a high school yearbook, we have a formula now at least through this experience. One, they can resort to a few days of self-help and write to the Internet and beg them to take the child's pictures off because there's all this salacious commentary underneath the picture. They're calling the child every nasty name in the world. For the most part, they'll be ignored. So you step it up one, you hire a lawyer. Well, the lawyer can send any percentage of 43 million cease and desist letters, because that's how many Web site there are. The majority of the Web sites will write back to the lawyer and tell them, quote/unquote, in this day and age, there are no rights to privacy. The third thing you can do is you can haul your child and your lawyer around the country and have a national media campaign to put so much pressure on the Web sites that hopefully they will remove it.</s>O'BRIEN: And obviously you've made the choice for the third. Katie, I'm curious to know what it's like to be you and what it has been like to be you. You live in a small town. This case obviously is taking up everyone's attention. Did you find that no one would believe you at first when you would say it's not me?</s>LOVELL: Well, because we do live in a small town, everybody within our community knows the real accuser, so they knew that it was the wrong girl being posted on the Internet. But because we have had such a swarm of reporters within our little town that I would be down at the local ball fields and reporters would come up to me and be like, "That's you. I recognize you."</s>O'BRIEN: In addition, and this is a little bit graphic, and I'm sorry, but on the Web sites, they Photo Shop your head onto another person's body in sexually compromising positions with Kobe Bryant. I mean it's pretty disgusting in a lot of ways. I know you're heading off to college soon. Do you feel like this is going to follow you? I mean how do you feel?</s>LOVELL: That's one of the reasons why we want to come on the air, let people know that this is the wrong girl, so that way when I do go to college next year, I won't already have that stigma attached to me. People will know that I'm not the girl that is accusing Kobe Bryant.</s>O'BRIEN: Even if -- and it wasn't you -- do you -- were you still stung? I mean people wrote, "slut," they wrote "whore" under your picture. Do you feel -- I mean and it was not you. It just seems incredibly cruel to someone who's not the alleged victim in the case and someone who is the alleged victim in the case.</s>LOVELL: Yes, it just, it makes me upset. I don't feel that the real accuser should be on the Internet, as I don't think that I should have been posted on there either. It just, it really makes me wonder if that's what our world is coming to if people can post random people on the Internet and they have -- there's no laws to protect citizens from that.</s>LARENE: Which comes to the fourth remedy, to file libel suits, again, against any percentage of 43 million Web sites. As you can tell, the point I'm leading to is the state of the laws today really doesn't afford an effective remedy. We need new laws. We need regulations for Internet traffic.</s>O'BRIEN: It'll be interesting to see what happens there and also, hopefully, that this will all clear up everything in your life, as well. We certainly appreciate you coming in and talking about it. I know it's hard for you. And it is, it's embarrassing. So I'm grateful for your time. Thanks so much.</s>LOVELL: Thank you.</s>MATTHEWS: Thank you.</s>LARENE: Thank you.</s>O'BRIEN: We appreciate it. Accuser>