Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett, the U.S. territory’s non-voting member of the House of Representatives, was the target of a cyberstalking scheme in which two former staffers copied and distributed her private nude images and videos in 2016 in an effort to damage her re-election campaign. The case led to federal and local charges against ex-aides Juan R. McCullum and Dorene Browne-Louis, who both ultimately pleaded guilty.
In March 2016, then-staffer Juan R. McCullum offered to help repair Stacey Plaskett’s malfunctioning, password‑protected iPhone by taking it to an Apple Store, according to court filings and news reports. Plaskett provided the password so the device could be unlocked during the repair process. Investigators later found that McCullum copied private nude images and videos of Plaskett and her husband, Jonathan Buckney‑Small, from the phone without their consent.
By July 2016, after McCullum had left Plaskett’s office, he created email and Facebook accounts under a fake name and sent the images and videos to political figures in the U.S. Virgin Islands, reporters, and others, encouraging that the material be circulated in Plaskett’s congressional district, prosecutors said.
Court documents and local coverage state that McCullum informed another former Plaskett aide, scheduler Dorene Browne‑Louis of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, that he had the explicit material. Browne‑Louis, who had also left Plaskett’s office by then, provided McCullum with email addresses and other contact information drawn from campaign files to facilitate distribution of the images. She also forwarded one of the nude images to an individual working on the campaign of a challenger in Plaskett’s 2016 Democratic primary, according to prosecutors.
Both ex‑staffers were indicted in 2017 and later pleaded guilty to a combination of federal cyber‑related offenses and District of Columbia charges involving the disclosure of sexual images. McCullum admitted to conspiracy, cyberstalking‑related conduct, and local counts including conspiracy to disclose sexual images and attempted unlawful publication of a sexual image. Browne‑Louis pleaded guilty to one federal cyber charge and a D.C. conspiracy‑to‑disclose‑sexual‑images offense, and separately admitted to being an accessory after the fact under a related plea agreement.
In written victim‑impact statements submitted to the court, Plaskett said her family’s privacy had been “invaded” and “pillaged” by the distribution of the images, describing a deep sense of exposure and humiliation. She also wrote that women in the Virgin Islands recognized the episode as an effort to “bring a Black woman down,” and expressed particular anger that a playful family video featuring the couple’s then‑toddler‑aged daughter was exploited to cast their family in a distorted and sexualized light.
Buckney‑Small likewise addressed McCullum in his own statement, accusing him of trying to portray him as “morally inept” with his child and recounting the emotional strain of confronting someone he believed had attacked his family, according to court records.
In March 2018, McCullum was sentenced in federal court in Washington, D.C., to one year and one day in prison on a sentence of one year and 361 days with all but that period suspended, along with two years of probation and 100 hours of community service. Browne‑Louis was sentenced the following month to two years of supervised probation and ordered to pay a fine, but did not receive a prison term, according to court proceedings summarized by local outlets.
Plaskett, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, later drew separate media attention in 2019 during a House Oversight Committee hearing involving former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. At that time, she was reported to have exchanged messages seeking additional information related to the hearing, a matter that critics seized on in an unsuccessful effort to censure her in the House. The censure measure failed on a largely party‑line vote.
