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What college student doesn't love a good frat party? But sometimes it can go wrong, so very wrong.
A University of Florida student who says she was secretly filmed while intoxicated at a fraternity party has gone public with her account of how the footage spread online, triggering a wave of harassment and raising broader legal questions about nonconsensual intimate images, commonly referred to as revenge porn.
21-year-old Maddie Kowalski addressed the situation in a four-part Instagram video, describing how images and videos of her were circulated without her knowledge or consent. She said the content, recorded during two nights she barely remembers, began spreading among college students before reaching wider social media platforms.
“I was heavily intoxicated and not in a sound mind to consent to anything depicted,” Kowalski said. “I did not know I was being filmed, and I did not consent to any of it being shared.”
According to Kowalski, the situation escalated after a nude photograph of her was privately distributed and then discussed anonymously on Yik Yak. She said she later discovered multiple explicit videos posted publicly on X, where her name quickly began trending. The "Maddie Kowalski Video" spread like wildfire.
“At that moment, my whole world collapsed,” she said. “Everything was being shared and reposted so fast, and I couldn’t stop it.”
As the footage spread, Maddie Kowalski said her phone number and social media accounts were leaked, leading to thousands of calls, messages, and direct harassment. Images of her family members were also circulated, and anonymous individuals contacted her parents seeking comment, including one instance in which a phone call was recorded and posted online.
Legal experts note that situations like the one Maddie Kowalski describes may fall under state laws addressing nonconsensual intimate image abuse. In Florida, it is illegal to intentionally disclose sexually explicit images of another person without consent when the person had a reasonable expectation of privacy, and the disclosure causes emotional distress.
While often referred to as revenge porn, the laws do not require proof of revenge or malicious intent. The unauthorized recording or distribution of intimate material alone can meet the legal threshold. Intoxication may further complicate consent, as a person who is incapacitated cannot legally agree to being filmed or to the sharing of such material.
Maddie Kowalski said she is not naming anyone involved, citing the possibility of criminal proceedings.
“Many parts of this contain potentially criminal acts,” she said. “To protect the legal process, I will not be naming names.”
She also rejected online rumors suggesting she engaged in sexual acts in exchange for drugs, calling those claims false and defamatory.
“I did not exchange anything for anything,” she said. “Those statements are completely untrue.”
Still searches for Maddie Kowalski sex tape trended on social media.
As the controversy moved from X and Yik Yak to TikTok and Instagram, Kowalski said misinformation spread quickly, with some users framing her videos as an apology. She said she was not apologizing, but explaining what happened to her.
“This is not me taking blame for what was done to me,” she said.
The harassment forced her to leave Gainesville and return home, where she said she altered her appearance and avoided public spaces out of fear of further exposure.
“I’ve been terrified to leave the house,” she said. “My biggest fear is another picture of me showing up online.”
Neither the University of Florida nor any affiliated fraternities has released public statements, and no law enforcement agency has confirmed whether an investigation is underway.
Civil action remains a potential option under Florida law, which allows victims of nonconsensual image distribution to seek damages.
Kowalski said she decided to speak publicly in part to highlight the harm caused by sharing intimate content without consent. She encouraged others facing similar situations to seek help through organizations such as StopNCII.org and the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
“If sharing my story helps even one person understand why consent matters, then it’s worth it,” she said. “This is the start of me taking my life back.”
She has removed all previous posts from her Instagram account (@madskowalski), instead posting a 4-part video story on her page and a link to stopncii.org, an organization dedicated to stopping non-consensual intimate image abuse. I wanted to share her story with you in her own words, as nobody can tell you her story better than she can.
Hi, my name is Maddie Kowelski, and you may or may not know me personally, but you may have heard a little bit about me over the past month.
Now that I've had a little bit of time to process everything, I just wanted to come on here and talk a little bit more about me as well as everything I've gone through. And yes, I dye my hair blonde. I've done a lot of things to change my appearance during this time to hide from the world. Before I begin, I just wanted to establish a few things.
This video is going to be about me, what happened, and how I dealt with everything. I'm going to be as open and transparent as I can. I can't run away from what you may have seen or heard about me. I'm going to be talking about things that I really wish I didn't have to, and certainly wish I didn't have to publicly.
I'm not here to try and get back at anyone. My If any parts of this contain potentially criminal acts. To
protect the criminal and legal process, I will not be naming names of those involved. If you did have anything kind or positive to contribute or say, I would love to hear from you.
Lastly, if you're going through any cyber sexual harassment or any sexual abuse for that matter,
please know that you're not alone. There are many resources such as stopncii. Org or the National
Domestic Violence Hotline at thehotline. Org, so please reach out for help. So things for me started to go wrong on a Sunday afternoon when I heard that someone had sent a nude photograph of me to his friends at FSU. And in this picture, I was heavily intoxicated and my friend was holding me up. So right after this, I started getting flooded with messages that I was being talked about all over my school's
Yikyak. And if you aren't familiar, Yikyak is a platform where students at a university can post anonymously for other students to see. And because it's anonymous, people think they can just say whatever they want. People started talking about videos on Yikyak, and I was just really confused because I didn't know what they were referring to. Everything was just happening really fast, and I couldn't comprehend any of it. I then went to X, and that's where I saw the videos for the first time.
Several videos from two nights that I could barely remember had been posted to the Internet for everyone to see.
And at this moment, I just felt my whole world collapse. Everything was being shared and reposted so fast, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. And I felt really detached from the girl in the videos because I had so little memory of the events. While all of this was happening, somebody leaked my phone number and people started posting what my social media accounts were. And before I could private my accounts, pictures of me and my friends and my family were being posted all over the Internet.
And I was receiving thousands of phone calls and texts and DM saying the most horrific things you can imagine. I'm extremely grateful that my roommates realized very quickly how everything was spiraling and becoming dangerous for me.
And they went out of their way to stay with me and make sure I was okay. I'm just so grateful that they cared so much about protecting me and were so there for me. Soon after, these young men who were posting about me on Twitter decided that ruining my life wasn't enough and that it was time to harass my family as well. My dad's picture, including photographs from very personal moments, started showing up all over Twitter and YikYak as well.
Then these people started calling my parents, and they would use fake names, the fake phone numbers, and ask them to confirm and comment on the videos. And one person even filmed their conversation with my parents and posted it to ex illegally.
I'll never understand how people can go so low to hurt somebody purely for their own fun and enjoyment. However, I'm so, so grateful to have my parents 100% support at this time. Even though the situation was completely life-changing and embarrassing, they've stood by me without judgment and with unconditional love.
The online conversation was really limited to ex and YikYak the first night, but the next day it started moving to other platforms. Several random people, as well as influencers with tens and hundreds of thousands of followers, started making TikToks about me as well as Instagram reels. And most of these were just saying completely untrue defamatory and that are, again, not true.
By now it felt like the entire world was making fun of me for something that they knew nothing about and that was devastating. The posts were horrifying enough, but people in the comment sections were equally as disgusting and people were even taking naked photos of me and putting them into TikTok comment sections.
Let me just kind of level set here. Yes, there were non consensual sexual images and videos of me posted to the Internet. Yes, I was under the influence in all of these videos. How? However, the rumors that I did anything in exchange for are completely false, completely false and not true.
My life got out of control the past few months and I made bad decisions that put myself in a position to be taken advantage of and I regret those choices immensely. However, I did not exchange for and any statement saying otherwise is completely false. I also want to be clear that I was not in a sound mind to consent to anything depicted in the videos.
Social media Several friends as well as individuals I didn't know try to defend me and it may not have seemed like it helped very much, but it genuinely meant the absolute world to me. Especially because a lot of my friends from home and from college quickly unfollowed me, blocked me and did not reach out to check if I was okay.
I am extremely crushed that so many of my supposed friends abandoned me during this. Two girls I know from home even joked about having a reunion at my funeral because there was a rumor that everyone just kept piling on and I have never felt more alone. By Monday afternoon my name was the number one trending topic on X and it didn't stop because these boys felt remorseful or decided to stop doing what they were doing. It stopped because the content was illegal and ex realized that shortly after all of this happened, I moved home. I changed my appearance.
I've been terrified to leave the house out of fear of being recognized and the harassment that would follow. My biggest fear is another picture of me showing up on social media and the entire world having another opportunity to humiliate and degrade me again.
There's so many things I just don't understand. Like how the boys involved with this were able to do this without any reverse.
Why none of their friends or fraternity brothers who knew of their plans didn't step in to stop it. Not even out of defending me, but just being a decent human.
How none of these guys have come forward to admit their involvement or to apologize for trying to ruin my life or not stopping those who did.
I'm also aware of another video circulating and let me just make this extremely clear that I was under the influence and unable to consent to anything depicted in that video, and I also didn't know I was being filmed and did not consent to that, and certainly did not consent to it being distributed.
This is hard for me to talk about, but I hope that in sharing this, people can realize that possessing it is not OK and that sharing it in any form is illegal.
I'd like to end this with something really important.
Although I don't have control over what happened to me, I can control what I do moving forward, and I want to move forward with healing.
These last few weeks have been the darkest and hardest moments of my life, but I'm still here, and that's something that I'm really learning to be proud of.
I'm taking steps to rebuild myself, to feel safe again, and to understand that what happened to me doesn't define me.
And I know that this is a long path. I've unfortunately also realized that there are so many women and girls, as well as men, who go through things like this in silence, feeling alone or ashamed or afraid to speak.
And if sharing my story can help even one person feel seen, or teach one person why I consent indecency matter, then it's worth it.
So from here on, I'll be posting my healing process, what I'm learning, how I'm coping, and how I'm choosing to move forward.
If you're going through something similar, please know that you are not alone.
Healing is possible and you deserve support, compassion, and justice.
There are so many resources such as Stop ncii. org, the National Domestic Violence Hotline at thehotline.org. You can also text START to 88788.
And this is the start of me taking my life back.
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