The University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department hasn’t seen a case quite like the one in which private nude photos and video of the school’s women’s volleyball team were leaked.
The police department’s Executive Director of Communications, Marc Lovicott, said in a statement to the Daily Mail that authorities are dealing with a “unique case” for a number of reasons — and that the explicit content came from an unspecified player’s phone.
“This is a unique case because of the high profile of the girls involved and our detectives are working on this case as a priority,” Lovicott said in the statement. “Our department has worked on cases like this before but many of them involve people threatening to put intimate photos online – blackmail. Nothing like that is suspected in this case and again, this case is unique because of the high profile of the players.”
Police said the player — whose phone was responsible for 40 leaked photos and video — is not under suspicion and does not know how the photos became published online.
“We’re looking into what happened and who may have shared these photos,” Lovicott said. “None of the players are being investigated and we are looking at the possibility that one of their phones was hacked.”
Under Wisconsin law, it is illegal to share explicit photos without permission.
The police statement came after the University of Wisconsin said in a separate statement last week that authorities are investigating “multiple crimes” after private photos and video of members of the women’s volleyball team were shared on the internet.
According to UW, members of the volleyball team contacted the university police upon learning that the images were circulating.
The photos and videos leaked online were taken in the aftermath of the Badgers’ national championship win last December.
Most of the content has been removed from the websites where it was posted without the players’ consent, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In one of the photos, which was received by the Sentinel, several players have their sports bras lifted during the team’s private celebration after winning the Big Ten title.
The Wisconsin women’s volleyball team has remained focused on the court amid the situation, with the Badgers scoring victories over Michigan State and Michigan over the weekend.
