Sometimes men create video love letters to present to their girlfriends on Saint Valentine’s day. And sometimes men discuss with other married friends the best ways to secretly create a pornographic tape of their girlfriends, without their girlfriend’s permission. This is what Republican Rhode Island State Sen. Nicholas Kettle is alleged to have done. According to WPRI 12, Kettle is being charged with all kinds of strangeness after an investigation revealed he had tried to exchange nude images of his girlfriend for like photos of a friend’s wife.
The state police affidavit, filed in Kent County District Court, lays out the case for a video voyeurism charge against Kettle. He was arrested on the charge on Friday after an investigation that involved the seizure of multiple cell phones, ipads and computers.
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According to the affidavit, Kettle sent the friend photos of his girlfriend while the friend sent nude photos of his wife. The two met in the Boy Scouts, according to Kettle’s girlfriend.
“Mr. Kettle stated that he needed to be ‘stealthy’ and was asking [the friend] for advice on how to take a video without [his girlfriend] knowing,” Detective Hopkins writes in the document. Hopkins also said the text messages with the nude photos had been deleted from Kettle’s iPhone, but had synced to other devices including his iPad via iCloud.
Kettle’s attorney believes he can get Kettle off of the “voyeurism” charge with a workaround that these images were not taken for “gratification.” Seriously. The reason Kettle was being investigated in the first place? Charges that he attempted to blackmail and compel a State Senate page to perform sexually.
The page would later unsuccessfully challenge Kettle for his Senate seat in 2014, three years after the alleged crimes took place.
”We believe this is a political witchhunt spearheaded by one of Kettle’s former political rivals,” said J.A. Dixon-Acosta, one of Kettle’s attorneys.
Democrats in the state have called for Kettle to resign and say they would support expelling him from his seat. Republicans continue to sit in their man-caves looking at posters of Roy Moore and cleaning the guns that their friends at the NRA keep sending them in gift baskets.