Eric Posey, a drag performer who a woman falsely accused of exposing himself to children at a pride event, has now been awarded $1.1 million in a defamation case.
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According to the Coeur D’Alene Press, on Friday (May 24), an Idaho jury awarded drag performer Eric Posey more than $1.1 million in damages after Posey accused a reported far-right blogger of defaming him when she falsely claimed he exposed himself to a crowd, including children, during a Pride event in June 2022.
Posey, who performs under the drag name Mona Liza Million, sued blogger Summer Bushnell in 2022 after she reportedly posted a doctored video that showed Posey appearing in drag at a pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The video that Bushnell posted included supposed footage of Posey dancing in drag with a blurred area around his waist.
In an earlier post, Bushnell wrote, “Why did no one arrest the man in a dress who flashed his genitalia to minors and people in the crowd? No one said anything about it and there’s video. I’m going to put up a blurred video to prove it.”
The video containing the blurred footage sparked tons of controversy on social media, despite the unedited version showing the drag performer in an outfit with a boa around his waist and no inappropriate behavior conducted. In response to Bushnell’s constant posts about the doctored video, a police investigation was launched and city prosecutors publicly clarified that the drag performer did not expose himself to children at the pride event.
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During the trial, Posey told the jury that Bushnell’s posts sparked a huge conservative war against the LGBTQ+ community and drag performers. He said that he was subjected to harassment and received death threats as a result of Bushnell’s comments.
Posey told the court, “Imagine being in a dark hole where you have nobody and you felt the whole world turn their back on you. But somehow, you were surrounded by warriors, true people of Idaho — not transplants, true people of this soil. I am fortunate to say I have people like that around me, people that lifted me up.”
It’s reported that during the “conservative war,” another turning point included the moment when 31 members of a white supremacist group got arrested, and were later charged with conspiracy to riot, near the 2022 pride event.
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By the end of the trial, the jury found Bushnell guilty of defamation and responsible for damages that awarded the drag performer more than $1.1 million, breaking down to $926,000 in compensatory damages for defamation and $250,00 in punitive damages, as Posey’s attorneys had argued that Bushnell knew her statements were false and continued to share them online anyway, “with reckless disregard for the truth.”
It’s also reported that the jury asked the judge if it was possible to order Bushnell to remove the deceptive videos from her social media pages, which remained published as of Friday, but was told it was not possible.
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