Texas senator's son arrested on charges related to 'revenge porn'
TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas - The son of a Texas senator has been arrested in Travis County on charges related to revenge porn. Senator Charles Schwertner’s son is now facing the consequences of a law his father helped pass about eight years ago.
About six months after 21-year-old Matthew Schwertner broke up with his girlfriend, she received threatening texts known as revenge porn.
"The person has to intentionally threaten someone to disclose intimate visual materials, nude photographs, things like that," Criminal defense attorney Matthew Sharp said. "There has to be some benefit that the person making the threat is seeking to obtain."
Court documents said last month, Schwertner texted the victim and said if she didn’t return various items that he bought for her during their relationship, he was going to send an intimate image of her to her mother and sisters. When the victim asked why Schwertner still had this image of her, he answered, "In case you acted like a 2-year-old." The woman told police the messages continued after she asked him to stop contacting her. One text said, "It’s ok ur a poor Mexican what can one expect."
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Sharp, unaffiliated with the case, said revenge porn happens all the time, but many times women don’t report it.
"Most of the women just want it to go away, they don’t want to bother with the cops, so they don’t," Sharp said.
Schwertner’s ex did go to law enforcement, and he was arrested for harassment and felony threat to publish intimate visual matter. His father, Texas Senator Charles Schwertner, voted to make this crime a serious offense in 2015, known as Senate Bill 1135. Senator Schwertner wasn’t an author on the bill, but did vote for it. It passed the Texas Senate unanimously.
Senator Schwartner’s staff told FOX 7 he didn’t have a comment on his son’s arrest at this time. Matthew Schwertner’s attorney didn’t return FOX 7’s phone call.