Carrie Goldberg (born 1976/1977) is an American lawyer specializing in sex crimes with her law firm C.A. Goldberg PLLC. She has represented: five clients who described sexual abuse committed by Harvey Weinstein; the former Democrat Member of Congress Katie Hill after her naked photos were published in the media; and the author Emma Cline after an ex-partner sued for plagiarism. Her legal cases with low-profile individuals—involving revenge porn, intimate partner violence and online abuse—often draw national media attention.
Goldberg is opposed to Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act (CDA), which exempts websites from being liable for third-party content; her case against Grindr for negligence was rejected for this reason. She has criticized the New York City Department of Education's responses to reports of sexual violence by students, and has represented such students.
Goldberg experienced significant sexual violence, which motivated her to start her law firm in 2014. Prior to this, she worked with Holocaust survivors for several years and in property and guardianship law. Her legal career and life experiences are the subject of her book Nobody's Victim (2019), which also describes other famous cases of sexual violence by "psychos, stalkers, pervs, and trolls".
Early life and education
Goldberg grew up in Aberdeen, Washington, as the second-oldest of four siblings. She graduated from Aberdeen High School in 1995. Her father owned a furniture store and was involved in reopening a local paper mill; her mother wrote obituaries for the local paper before she had children. Goldberg's grandmother, born in the 1910s, was a professor of dental hygiene. Goldberg's wardrobe incorporates much of her grandmother's old clothing.
As a young girl, Goldberg started a business initiative—Masked Mams—where she would barter riot grrrl-esque bras made from doll heads at the Evergreen State College. When working on her high school yearbook with a friend, she got in trouble for writing erotica about the boys' sports teams. A formative moment in her childhood was when she dropped a friend off at a motel party and the friend was raped while unconscious and intoxicated.
Prior to college, Goldberg wanted to be a writer. She studied at Vassar College, where she started a relationship with a professor whom she later married and divorced. Working at her father's mill one summer, Goldberg faced routine workplace sexual harassment, which led her to develop an eating disorder that hospitalized her; she suspended from Vassar for a semester. She graduated with a B.A. degree in 1999, majoring in English.
Career
Goldberg's work against revenge porn is best known but her career as an attorney is broader, including cases of "sextortion" (sexual extortion), online harassment, cyberstalking, intimate partner violence, and rape. Her clients include minors. Goldberg told Psychology Today that the one commonality in her clients is that "someone took away their control", whether it was their control over their body, privacy or reputation. She told The Cut in 2019 that she does not maintain a "traditional attorney-client relationship", as the sensitive nature of cases requires mutual trust. Her law firm has staff members who were formerly her clients; one such person is Norma Buster, a client relations manager whose ex-boyfriend posted revenge porn of her.
Goldberg focuses on civil law, but her law firm also works on some criminal cases, restraining orders and removing abuse content from the internet. Goldberg advises people who have experienced revenge porn and online abuse to keep evidence of the crimes rather than deleting it. She says that they should first report the abuse to the websites hosting the content, then contact police or Title IX co-ordinators (in educational settings), and find legal assistance if this fails. An attorney may assist in sending cease and desist letters, Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices, and search engine de-indexing requests.
Early career
After moving to New York in 1999, Goldberg was a case manager for Holocaust survivors; she began law school at night school in 2003. In 2007, she graduated from her night school, Brooklyn Law School, with a J.D. degree. As a lawyer, she advocated for tenants facing eviction, then moved on to guardianship law. As Director of Legal Services with the Vera Institute of Justice, Goldberg negotiated clients' wishes for end-of-life care and represented elderly people who were being taken advantage of.