Their daughter had sounded the alarm about being stalked, threatened and blackmailed by Mr. Rowland, whom Ms. McCluskey had broken up with when she learned that he had lied about his name and was a convicted sex offender on parole, the lawsuit said. Ms. McCluskey, 21, turned over photographs to Miguel Deras, a campus police officer at the time, telling him that Mr. Rowland had threatened to release them unless she paid him $1,000, according to the lawsuit. Officer Deras kept the images on his personal cellphone and shared them with friends, the suit contends. “One of the things that shows a certain cavalierness and inappropriateness, at best, is this Officer Deras showing compromising photos to other officers who were not involved in the case that were used to blackmail Lauren,” James W. McConkie, a lawyer for the McCluskeys, said in an interview on Monday. The alleged breach of privacy was first reported last month by The Salt Lake Tribune, which said that the Police Department in Logan, Utah, where Officer Deras is now employed, had begun an internal affairs investigation into the matter.

Source: New York Times June 09, 2020 01:43 UTC