Emily Chan
Rumors can ruin your reputation beyond repair, even if they’re not true. In 2015, a realtor from Huntsville, Alabama, named Monika Glennon, became the target of an online smear campaign that negatively impacted her personal and professional life.
That year, an anonymous individual posted a false story on the website “She’s a Homewrecker,” accusing Glennon of having an affair with a client’s husband. According to the story, a woman and her husband had been house hunting with Glennon as their real estate agent.
One day, the woman was late for an appointment to view a home. When she arrived, she found her husband and Glennon sleeping together on the floor of the house.
In the post, the woman went into graphic detail about what she had seen and even claimed to have taken pictures of the encounter while the two of them were hastily redressing.
However, the only photo on the site was a professional headshot of Glennon taken from her realtor bio page. The post also warned people not to use Glennon as a realtor. It was viewed about 95,000 times and still shows up in Google searches today.
The fabricated story damaged her reputation and caused significant financial loss. Glennon estimated that the accusation cost her $200,000 in business and $100,000 in legal fees. She filed a lawsuit in an attempt to uncover the identity of whoever wrote the post.
She thought it could be a rival realtor or someone who was angry with her for some reason. A judge ruled in federal court that Glennon was a victim of libel, invasion of privacy, and emotional distress that was intentionally inflicted upon her.
In the end, the culprit turned out to be a total stranger who was offended by comments Glennon had made under an online news article in 2014. Her name was Mollie Rosenblum, a resident of Athens, Alabama. The news story was about a teenager who took a smiling selfie during a visit to the concentration camp Auschwitz.
The article went viral and sparked a heated debate. Critics claimed that the teen’s selfie was disrespectful, but Glennon defended the teen, saying that all kids make mistakes. Rosenblum, who was of Jewish descent, disagreed.
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