Hackers, Harassment & Stalking: How Nicole Eggert Suppressed the Unraveling of Her Sexual Assault Story
Update: Samantha Salway has carried on a relentless stalking campaign against the entire Baio family and this author since the publication of this story. Two criminal charges were accepted and laid against Salway with the West Mercia police department for Harassment and Malicious Communications.
July 22, 2020- Nicole Eggert had decided to destroy the life of her former “Charles in Charge” co-star Scott Baio with a false claim of childhood rape, as more fully described in this two-year investigation. Eggert was rocked back, however, by the immediate fight put up by Baio and his team, which fundamentally discredited her key claims. Indeed, her allegations were quickly exposed as a series of false charges and contradictions.
Facing a reputational catastrophe, and held accountable by thousands of Baio supporters, Eggert enlisted allies in an effort to silence those who opposed her. Eggert had fostered a self-image as a “tough girl” much of her life, hanging around with a rogue’s gallery of scoundrels and thugs, and associating with people of who have made questionable life choices. Her closest friend, Cathie Charrette (aka Stacy Burke) is a pornographic actress who sells fetish videos. (https://onlyfans.com/stacyburke) One of her loudest (and most profane) supporters, Stephanie (Sun Po) Ng, is a pharmacist who signed a consent agreement with the State of California after having been caught stealing Viagra and Cialis on the job.
Unsurprisingly, then, after Eggert’s accusations against Baio were exposed as baseless, she turned to a questionable new source for help — the confederation of hackers known as “Anonymous.” She also enlisted a rogues gallery of women with questionable motives of their own. Their intention was apparently not to advocate for Nicole Eggert or to support her false claims. Instead, they assisted her systematic efforts to stalk, harass and intimidate anyone who supported Scott Baio.
The hackers known as “Anonymous” are not an organization in any true sense of the word, but rather have found common cause in their advocacy of cyber-attacks on the government and others. They adopt a menacing persona as a tool of enforced compliance to their positions and thinking, making self-identifying as a member a favored technique of not just hackers, but of various online harassers and trolls. Eggert, as a public person, made an extraordinary decision to align herself so openly with a group whose very identity has been forged around illegal activities.
Nicole Eggert’s public appeals to Anonymous were at once surprising, and, given her history, not entirely unexpected. At various points in her public communications, she has thanked “Anonymous” for helping her and praised what she described as their “work.” While their exact role is unknown, Eggert’s association with the group has coincided with several Scott Baio supporters having had data intrusions, or personal details such as home addresses, relatives, and cell phone numbers published to pastebin and similar websites, known dumping grounds for stolen or misappropriated data attributed to “Anonymous” members. Others who describe themselves as members have issued public threats to Baio supporters, including the author of this article, as acknowledged (and thanked) by Eggert for doing so.
Eggert also developed around her a small ring of supporters among friends and relatives to do her bidding, usually concealed behind fake online identities. These were not people advancing her story through evidence and facts; they conducted a relentless and unbridled campaign of harassment and stalking against those who refused to support Eggert’s story.
At the center of all of this activity is Nicole Eggert herself. She publicly thanked (and made a supportive video for) Alberto Daniel Hill, a confessed notortious Uruguyan hacker who stole the identities and sensitive medical records of AIDS patients in an extortion scheme (translated). He was convicted and served a prison term. He emerged determined to redefine his criminal history as glamorous, making Eggert’s appeal to the Anonymous collective a perfect vehicle for him. He used her help to start a podcast and seek media attention, while participating in the ring of stalking and harassment that Eggert initiated.
Why would Eggert compound making false accusations of sexual assault by leading a secret campaign through proxies against not just the person she claimed to be her rapist, but also his entire family and even ordinary fans who supported him?
To answer this question, applied psychologists write about the “Dark Triad” of personality characteristics that predict an inclination towards truly malevolent behavior. This dark triad refers to the personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. People scoring high on these traits are more likely to commit crimes, cause social distress, and create severe problems for an organization. They also tend to be less compassionate, less agreeable, less empathetic, less satisfied with their lives, and less likely to believe they and others are good. It would require a professional scoring and diagnosis to properly evaluate anyone’s position along this continuum of malevolence, but even a layperson can clearly see many of these characteristics appear to apply to Nicole Eggert. And because similar personalities attract, Eggert found herself surrounded by comparably dark relatives and friends, enabling each other’s behavior. A perfect example of how this played out is the way Eggert and Co. treated Lisa Ripp.
Ripp lives in the South and has never met Scott Baio. But Ripp noted the inconsistencies in Nicole Eggert’s story and supported Baio on Twitter. Ripp was a particularly dangerous person to Eggert, because of her own documented history as a rape victim. As reported by media, Ripp was taken captive, beaten and raped for 18 hours in 1999. Ripp had been publicly candid about her own problems when she was younger, saying “At the time in 1999, I was in the middle of drug addiction, buying drugs and smoking drugs..” After the rape and injuries she suffered that included a broken jaw from her attacker, she had been arrested on drug-related charges and jailed. Unlike many, however, she used the time incarcerated to her advantage, “I went to St. Gabriel on two drug charges but it changed my life,” she said. “I called it my prison rescue.”
Ripp emerged from prison freed from her addictions and with a new hold on life. Shockingly, the man who raped Ripp went uncharged for over a decade, until 2010, when Ripp’s unending personal advocacy resulted in a D.A. uncovering the lost and dusty files of the crimes committed against her, and the man who raped her was arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
As Ripp continued on her own healing journey, she recalled the cold and impersonal room where her statements were taken in the hours after she was brutally raped and beaten, the same one used for children who were victims of sex crimes. She created and funded a new space inside the New Orleans Children’s Advocacy Center called “Lisa’s Room,” where child victims could be interviewed among bright colors, stuffed animals and toys. New Orleans Parrish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, Jr, who has known Ripp for twenty years, since her darkest days, penned a tribute to her work, including her being awarded the “Tree of Life” by the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Advocacy Center. Nothing about the award is surprising, except perhaps that D.A. Cannizzaro was in 1999 the same judge who had sentenced Lisa Ripp to 3 ½ years in prison.
Needless to say, Ripp is tough. But even she was shocked by the vitriolic response from Eggert and her co-conspirators to her support for Scott Baio. Nicole Eggert herself unbelievably tweeted that rape victim Ripp had to “suck dick for crack, “ an apparent reference to the fact that Ripp had occasionally been forced to prostitute herself to support a raging drug addiction some twenty years earlier. Eggert also tweeted that that Ripp could go “fk herself.”
Eggert fan Christy Blackwell falsely identified Ripp, the victim of a sex crime, as a sex offender because of her prior conviction. Blackwell was particularly reckless in her behavior, also falsely accusing Ripp of having a recent cocaine conviction. Indeed, Blackwell was notably agressive in personal slurs, insults and harassment directed against the rape victim, including mocking her appearance. And in perhaps the low point of conduct among Eggert’s ring of supporters, an anonymous Twitter account called Ripp a “c***.” For many, it was hard to imagine how so much hate could be directed against a rape survivor. But for Ripp, worse news was in store.
Ripp had a solid job in sales and had received great employment reviews. Nonetheless, Ripp was fired from her job without explanation the same day as Christy Blackwell’s false tweet that Ripp was a registered sex offender. Nicole Eggert tweeted falsely that Ripp had a recent arrest for drug posession. The pace of Eggert’s and associate’s lies about her was relentless, causing her so much distress that she was hospitalized with chest pains. Ripp was undaunted; she had spent ten years chasing the man who raped her and walked free after she spent years in jail for her addiction. A band of internet loudmouths was not going to stop her. Ripp continues to support Baio; Eggert and Blackwell, among others, have never apologized or been held accountable for their actions.
Eggert herself set the pace for this kind of sinister retaliatory harassment, going after people on social media who challenged her made up story. Her responses to them were regularly aggressive, often profane. It was atypical for a purported victim of a sexual assault. In May, 2018, her activity on Twitter started to take an even darker turn. In response to one woman who had criticized Eggert’s story, herself a victim of domestic violence and recipient of a long term domestic violence restraining order against her ex-husband, Eggert located and published the woman’s phone numbers from a data service, which violated Twitter’s rules. The post was removed, but Eggert faced no consequence from the platform or the police, where the woman filed a complaint against her.
Soon after, another Scott Baio fan, Kim Jorges, tweeted her support for Baio and criticized Eggert’s story in a series of tweets, with which Eggert engaged online. The messages back and forth between Jorges and Eggert became heated. In response, Eggert made it known she had determined where Jorges lived and who her employer was, and started threatening Jorges with a harassment campaign using her 50,000+ Twitter followers.
Eggert ultimately carried out her threats, publishing pictures of Jorges taken from Facebook, and suggesting her employer, who she named, “should be made aware of her behavior,” following up that she wondered if Jorges “would still be laughing” when this happened.
Jorges received several anonymous and threatening phone calls intended to harass her. A male voice, apparently electronically altered, told Jorges that she needed to stop talking about Eggert, and that they knew “where she lived.” They told her that she was being watched, and to “watch her back.” Jorges received another call, from a person falsely claiming to be a LAPD detective. She hung up, set her phone to record, and waited; sure enough, the man called back. In a stunning recording, he threatens Jorges with fines and being “taken to court” if she discussed Eggert again in social media “or anywhere else.”
Jorges was scared that so much of her personal information was in the hands of Eggert, who was willing with her accomplices to transgress appropriate boundaries as a means of intimidation. She decided to fight back.
In Missouri (Jorges’ home state), cyber harassment is part of the state’s broader stalking laws (https://www.revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=565.090&bid=29308&hl=), which define stalking as “conduct that serves no legitimate purpose that is directed at a specific person that causes that person to reasonably fear for his or her safety or causes that person emotional distress,” and notes that “This conduct may be in many forms such as calling, following, writing, emailing, etc.” Jorges went to court seeking a restraining order against Eggert.
At the hearing, Jorges presented evidence of Eggert’s relentless publication of her personal information to her large worldwide audience of fans. She showed the tweets from Eggert suggesting that her fans contact Jorges’ employer. She played the harassing audio tape she had made and described the other threatening middle of the night calls, which all identified Eggert by name. Many judges set a high bar in issuing restraining orders for online activity, hesitant to appear to impede free speech. Her judge, however, was convinced that Nicole Eggert’s behavior was criminal and issued a restraining order against Eggert on May 18, 2018. But the issuance of this restraining order left Kim Jorges with a new problem.
Nicole Eggert has been defendant in many pieces of litigation, and she is no stranger to being served summons and other legal papers. According to many who have tried to serve her, she has become expert at avoiding service, which delays and, in some cases, ends litigation directed against her. Jorges’ restraining order was sent to local law enforcement for service, but Eggert evaded them. The restraining order thus died several weeks after having been issued.
But the Jorges story of 2018 was not finished yet. In 2019, Nicole Eggert’s cousin, Samantha Salway, started acting anonymously on Nicole’s behalf. Salway is the daughter of Crissie Duncan, Nicole Eggert’s aunt. Hypervigilant, she changes her usernames on Twitter at least once daily to avoid detection. She recently adopted as one such user identity an image of a menacing skull, with the name “I_ceeeeverything.” She has used variations of these names for some time to anonymously threaten people who oppose Eggert. She colorfully describes her past as having been married three times, raised two children, having a criminal record, and writing erotic fiction as a second job. She has acquired her cousin’s habit of dissembling, at times offering a last name that doesn’t correspond to any public records, and at others saying that her last name was unavailable because she was living under protection because of threats. In truth, Duncan manages the Star Inn, a tavern/hotel in Upton Upon Severn UK.
Duncan’s tough persona may well originate in her background. Samantha Salway was married to an infamous Police Constable, Simon Salway, who was convicted and jailed for having sex with crime victims. His arrest and trial made salacious headlines across the UK. Samantha Salway was mentioned in these stories as having grown suspicious of him, and she uncovered his actions by phoning a woman he was found to have impregnated. She must have been crushed, both for herself and her two children who watched their father paraded across television and print media as a sex criminal.
Which made it all the more surprising that Samantha Salway would later address her tweets to the Baio’s own daughter, taunting her and the Baios for the false claim Eggert had made against Scott. It seemed she was projecting the shame of her own ex-husband onto the Baio family. Many found it to be venal and arguably disturbed behavior. But she seemed unoncerned with the her morality, tweeting, “Let’s fuck Scott Baio today and his political bullshit.”
Salway felt free to act without ordinary decency because she had refused to identify herself as she harassed Baio supporters on Twitter, which is understandable given her actions. Perhaps most stunningly, she publicly tweeted about Kim Jorges, making what appears to be an offer of payment in Bitcoin, an untraceable cryptocurrency, for the harassment or hacking of Kim Jorges. “Kim Jorges, Nicole’s biggest fan,” she said. “I am putting together a fan club for superfans. DM me for info. Bitcoin only.”
While Salway’s effort to intimidate Kim Jorges, the woman who received a restraining order against Nicole Eggert is, given her history of anonymous social media posting, unsurprising, it is more unexpected that she would post private text messages between Eggert and the detective who investigated the Eggert claims in 2018. Salway falsely claimed that they were part of a current investigation. No other accounts, anonymous or named, could obtain text messages from Eggert’s phone unless Eggert herself provided them. The messages contain the phone number of the DA that ultimately dismissed the Baio matter. Contacted by email, the detective in these text messages confirmed he has not spoken to Eggert for over two years and asked for a copy of the posts with his text messages published by Samantha Salway and another Twitter account.
Nicole Eggert, as her story unwound, acted like anything but a victim of a sexual assault. She was profane and aggressive, attacking many who questioned her. She was boastful and made claim after claim that were later proven untrue. She promised evidence that she never delivered, and used a group of relatives and friends to publish sleazy anonymous innuendo. To many, Eggert’s actions were a betrayal of real sexual assault victims. Her obviously false claims and harassment undermined the vast majority, like Lisa Ripp, who were actual victims of rape and sexual assault. Eggert was happy to attack and harm even real rape victims if doing so served her purpose.
Twitter is well known as a haven for online trolling and harassment. The band of hackers, harassers and stalkers that surround Nicole Eggert , however, are more than just a sideshow of egregious and inhumane behavior. They are a peek behind the curtain of their ringleader, a onetime golden girl given every privilege of celebrity, who squandered it all in excess and lies that stretch back decades. They are also a cautionary tale about the dark side of human nature held unaccountable. Anonymity breeds contempt. Goaded and aided by Eggert, her relatives and friends assumed what they believed to be anonymous identities and took on the former actress’s own very worst qualities.
Note: The original two-year investigation into the discrepancies in Nicole Eggert & Alex Polinsky’s claims is located here.
