The Influencer Defending her Husband's Child Porn Charges
Because everyone is indeed lying to you.....
WE ARE SO CLOSE TO PUB DAY. LESS THAN 10 DAYS. I’ll be ending the offer of a free subscription for this newsletter for orders of Everyone is Lying to You on pub week so get those orders in. If every single subscriber to this newsletter gets it now we may defeat the patriarchy and JD Vance will cry and then his eyeliner will run.
Here is the Amazon link. I know it is often the easiest one. This is a list of more purchasing options, but it is also available at a lot of indie bookstores and you can get signed copies mailed to you here and here. Tour stops are here!
This is not what I was planning to post today, but so many of you emailed me about it over the weekend I figured I should weigh in. Everyone is Lying to You is not just a clever title with excellent marketing potential (though it is that). It’s my overarching thesis for the world of social media. There are wonderful things to be found on digital communities, but behind so many (maybe the majority) of the beautiful accounts showing glossy perfect seeming lives there is often a different reality.
Often that reality is simply mundane and boring, but sometimes it is much darker, much more sinister.
The shinier something looks on social media, the more fucked up it probably is underneath.
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You may have seen the Gulf Coast Stapletons on your FYP. Joshua and Brittani have about 81,000 followers on TikTok and they’ve made a whole brand out of beaches, boats, bikinis and cute coupledom.
Paradise can have a dark underbelly, and this one is particularly stomach-churning.
Joshua Stapleton, the 39-year-old husband half of this influencer power couple, just got sentenced to five years in prison followed by 15 years of probation for child pornography.
AND BRITTANI IS STANDING BY HIM AND DEFENDING HIM ON SOCIAL MEDIA. And many, many of their fans are also sticking by them. Here’s how it went down.
A former Cartersville resident with a sizable social media following has been sentenced in Bartow County to serve 5 years in prison after pleading guilty to 20 counts of sexual exploitation of children.
Joshua David Stapleton, 39, received a 20-year sentence, with 5 years to be served in custody and the remaining 15 on probation, according to documents dated June 24 filed by Bartow County Superior Court. The sentencing comes more than four years after authorities launched an investigation based on a tip submitted through the Internet Crimes Against Children program.
The Cartersville Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division led the case, working in partnership with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Investigators determined that between 2018 and 2020, Stapleton downloaded numerous images of prepubescent children in sexually abusive situations.
Brittani Stapleton, 31, didn't quietly delete their social media accounts and disappear. She went full ride-or-die in the most disturbing way possible. She posted an eight-minute TikTok video defending her husband.
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Brittani revealed that she knew about the charges before marrying Joshua in 2023. Yes, indeedy. She knew her fiancé was facing child exploitation charges and thought, "You know what? I'm going to marry this guy anyway and continue building our influencer empire. This is the man for me." She also claims all of their friends with kids were aware of the allegations and comfortable with him being around their children.
And plenty of the commenters seem to want to stick by the couple.
Brittani's entire identity, her income, her relevance, her sense of self, seems to have been built around being half of this perfect couple. When that foundation cracked, she didn't do what any rational person would do (run screaming in the opposite direction). Instead, she doubled down on the brand. Because in influencer land, authenticity has been so commodified that even standing by a convicted child predator can be just another content strategy.
We live in a media dumpster fire. She’s probably going to get her own reality show soon. The Secret Lives of Wives of Convicted Child Porn Offenders.
This case should force us to confront some deeply uncomfortable questions about the world we've created. How many followers does it take for someone to lose their moral compass entirely?
As recently as last week, the Stapletons were still posting content from Orange Beach, Alabama, maintaining their picture-perfect facade even as Joshua's sentencing loomed. Because the show must go on, right?
That commenter flippantly referring to abusive child pornography as "mess?" WTF.
I worked in a prosecutor's office. This is sadly super common behavior from a significant other. I suspect that it would make a reallt interesting study to see how often partners stand by people accused of these kinds of predatory crimes and what is their reasoning for that support. Based solely on my experience, often it seems to be women who were conditioned to get their sense of worth from being desirable to men who are wholly, unconditionally supportive and willing to overlook these red flags. It was something I always found disturbing. For me the most disturbing part of this specific case is that it seems to be shifting windows of both what we all people in the public eye to "get away with" and what women find or should find an acceptable fault in a potential partner, especially with the growing politics around women being out.