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A prominent young doctor ran a “made-to-order” revenge porn scheme where he’d solicit nude images of women and child pornography of underage girls and sell them online to a cadre of “misogynist incel” fans, a federal lawsuit filed on Friday alleges.
Dr. Philip Sobash, an internal medicine resident at White River Medical Center in Arkansas, met women online and offered to pay them for nude images, which he promised would remain private, the suit filed in the Central District of California alleges.
But instead, Sobash, 31, allegedly posted the images with the women’s names and other personal identifying information to Reddit and other “notorious websites” while “inciting others to anonymously harass and attack his victims,” according to the court documents.
“He sells the images for personal gain. But, more than that, he enjoys harming his victims,” the filing states, calling the conduct “cruel and sadistic.”
The accused “serial sexual predator” doctor is distinguished in his field. He completed his medical degree at the University of South Carolina’s College of Medicine and has already published 14 articles in leading oncology publications and other medical journals, online profiles show.
The plaintiff in the case, identified only as Jane Doe, lives in Orange County, California, and was a 21-year-old nursing student at California State University when she met Sobash on an online dating service in 2018 and began sending him nude images at his request, the suit states.
Sobash allegedly offered to pay Doe $75 a week for about 10 explicit videos and photos, with the promise the content would be kept private — a stipulation Doe reminded the doctor of one a week, according to the lawsuit.
“Defendant always responded with comforting statements of assurance that he would never share the photographs with anyone,” the suit alleges.
Throughout the relationship, Sobash “would make very unusual requests” for the images and would send her “props like sex toys and nursing machines to photograph herself with and then he would direct her.”
Unbeknownst to Doe, Sobash was receiving these requests from a cadre of creeps on Reddit and other revenge porn websites, who Sobash would allegedly sell the images to after the young woman had sent them to him, the suit states.
In February 2019, Doe received a direct message on Instagram alerting her of the Reddit page and realized the images she’d sent Sobash were being sold as a form of commercial porn, the lawsuit alleges.
“Her poses were actually made-to-order requests that Sobash was getting from anonymous men online and then Dr. Sobash would pretend that they were his personal requests, and he manipulated the relationship he had with Jane Doe by making these specific requests as if they were merely his own personal fetishes,” the suit alleges.
For example, a Redditor would request to see an image of Doe “f–king a dildo” and then Sobash would send Doe a text message asking to see her on her bed committing the act, the court papers allege.
“Defendant would provide the dildo, along with explicit instructions. Again, under the ruse that this was his own personal desire,” the lawsuit states.
“But in reality, he was fulfilling a commercial pornography request for one of his customers.”
Sobash would send Doe sex toys, such as “whips, dildos and nipple clamps” and would then give her “detailed directions on how to pose and how to stage the scene so he could sell the photographs without Jane Doe’s consent,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Dr. Sobash was receiving requests for particular scenarios from his ‘customers,’ and he would then act as the producer of these pornographic images, made for commercial gain, and then he would distribute them to his customers,” the records continue.
“[Doe] was unaware that she was being used as an unknowing commercial pornographic actress.”
When Doe confronted Sobash, he allegedly claimed that he was hacked, the filing says.
More than a year later, about 300 photos and videos of Doe are still available online for purchase on multiple websites and other victims are still being exploited under the same ruse, according to the court papers.
As a result, Doe has suffered exponentially. She regularly receives unwelcome images of men masturbating to her photos and harassing messages on Instagram and Facebook that include threats to expose her to her family and her school — and even threats of harm, the suit alleges.
Because websites are not held liable for the content their users post under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Doe is forced to spend hours each week submitting requests for copyright infringement to the sites as a last-ditch effort to get the images removed.
She was forced to delete her Instagram account, which was a source of income and had 15,000 followers, and now suffers from severe anxiety and depression, the suit says.
“[Doe] suffers intrusive thoughts that the strangers on the internet who have consumed her nude pictures and harass her and will harm her family. She feels hopeless about her career prospects because of the stalking by the online harassers and the threats of sending the images to her employers for the rest of her life,” the filing states.
According to the court documents, Sobash is facing another lawsuit from another victim for the same offense and he has “multiple other victims, some of whom are underage.”
Doe declined comment through her attorneys, who also declined to comment on the case.
Sobash, or his employer, didn’t return repeated requests for comment.
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