Vanessa Bryant (left) and Nikki Catsouras.Photo: getty, courtesy catsouras family
Christos and Lesli Catsouras know the painVanessa Bryantis going through amid herongoing lawsuit over photosthat were allegedly taken at the helicopter crash that killed her husbandKobe Bryantand daughterGianna.
The Catsourases lost their 18-year-old daughter Nikki on Oct. 31, 2006, after she was involved in a horrific car crash along State Route 241, near Lake Forest, California.
Nikki’s parents toldABC Newsin 2008 that their daughter took the keys to Christos' Porsche 911 Carrera without permission and was traveling 100 MPH when she clipped another car and lost control. Her vehicle then crossed over the median and slammed into a concrete toll booth, where she was instantly killed.
Afterward, authorities told them they would not be allowed to identify their daughter’s body because of how gruesome her injuries were, Christos and Lesli say. However, just weeks later, images of the wreck surfaced online. Many of them, featuring Nikki’s mutilated body, were anonymously sent to the Catsouras family with disturbing messages, the family says.
A six-year lawsuit against the California Highway Patrol (CHP) later ensued, as the Catsourases' legal team fought against the state agency that allegedly leaked the images.
“We both deal with a lot of anger and sadness and grief,” Lesli explains. “These trolls were sending the photographs to us, disguising them as anything they could think of. We didn’t know how we could get help. Nobody could help us. Nobody wanted to help us.”
Nikki Catsouras.courtesy catsouras family
“They say, ‘Once something’s on the internet, you can never get it down.’ And just the thought of that is so incomprehensible,” she continues. “I think at some point we realize we’re never going to fix this and we’re never going to get closure. We’re just never going to heal.”
Adds Christos: “To this day, I still get pictures emailed to me and our kids. I’m someone who wants to take control and eliminate issues as fast as I can to fix things. This was the first time in my life I wasn’t able to fix anything.”
Eight years after the Catsourases reached a settlement, the couple was devastated to learn that Vanessa, 39, was fighting a similar battle over photographs of thehelicopter crash that killedher husbandKobe, their 13-year-old daughterGiannaand seven others on Jan. 26, 2020.
In March 2020, Vanessafiled a legal complaintagainst Los Angeles County, as well as its sheriff’s office and fire department. In her lawsuit,which cited the Catsourases' case, her attorneys claimed that eight L.A. County Sheriff’s Department deputies took graphic photographs of the victims and “publicly disseminated photos from the helicopter crash site” after she personally requested “that the area be designated a no-fly zone and protected from photographers.” Sheriff Alex Villanuevaconfirmed to reporters at the timethat only the county coroner’s office and investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were permitted to photograph the crash scene.
In her lawsuit against L.A. County, Bryant complains that first responders shared the photos among themselves, and “laughed about” and “gawked at” the photos. She alleges that “the photograph-related actions or inactions proximately caused the allegedly severe and continuing emotional distress for which [Bryant] seeks monetary compensation.” The county has asked the court to dismiss Bryant’s lawsuit.
“I feel sick at the thought that deputies and firefighters have gawked at photos of my husband’s and child’s bodies without any reason,” she said in adeclarationfiled earlier this month. “I also feel extreme sadness and anger knowing that photos of my husband’s and daughter’s bodies were laughed about while shown at a bar and an awards banquet. Given how many people had the photos, I am confident these were not the only times the photos were shown off.”
Vanessa has been embroiled in litigation, with a judge ordering her tosubmit mental health recordsto prove that she has suffered emotional distress and mental anguish. (The judgepreviously denied the county’s requestto require Bryant to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to prove her emotional distress.)
Most recently, in November, lawyers for Los Angeles Countysought to dismiss Vanessa’s lawsuit, claiming it was “without legal merit” because their staff “worked tirelessly to protect the crash site, identify the victims, and notify the families.”
Vanessa Bryant.Steve Granitz/WireImage
Of Vanessa’s ongoing lawsuit, the Catsourases say they were “shocked” to hear what she was going through — especially because of how much her story mirrored their own.
“We had hoped that our situation would’ve helped send a message to police, first responders and the general public, that you can’t do this… It’s completely wrong on every single level,” Christos says. “But this is still happening. I feel like if [our case] had truly made an impact, then we wouldn’t be where we are.”
“I just feel desperately sorry for the Bryants,” Christos notes, adding how he and his wife had to undergo psychiatric evaluations to prove their mental distress.
For Lesli, she says learning about Vanessa’s case was “a trigger” to her own past trauma — but also a potential light at the end of a dark tunnel.
“I was so angry. How do people think they can do this? How does anyone think this is okay?” she says. “Under the circumstances of who this person was in this plane crash, they should have known better. They should have done a better job, for everybody.”
“I had given up hope that we were ever going to have our situation solved. But with Vanessa, I was having hope again that maybe she could fix this because of who she is and how she’d have an army behind her,” she adds. “I just get angry that she has to go through all that. And nobody’s going to understand how she feels because nobody else is going through it.”
“It shouldn’t have happened with [Vanessa],” Lesli says. “With us, it was so long ago and it’s never happened before, so they didn’t know. But at this point, they should take cell phones at any crime scene before they can leak them… investigative camera photos shouldn’t even be able to go out digitally. One person should be able to put those into some sort of format where they get locked up in their safe.”
“In Europe and Argentina and the Philippines, there’s a law called theRight to be Forgotten, where under certain circumstances, pictures are removed from the internet,” Christos explains. “And if somebody tries, you can get in trouble for posting those and they just take them off. If they can do that in those countries, why can’t we do it in the United States?”
“There’s got to be something put into place,” he adds. “People who do those horrible things should be held accountable.”
With just months to go until Vanessa’s trial on Feb. 22, 2022, the Catsourases are firmly standing behind the mom of four, hoping that she’ll win the case so that this issue stops once and for all.
“Before you hit send — whether it’s a text, an email, whatever source of digital thing it is — think to yourself, ‘Can this affect anybody’s life? Can it hurt somebody’s feelings?'” Christos says. “You can’t tell somebody how to think, but just be a good person and think about the consequences of hitting send and what it can do to that person’s family or that person.”
Adds Lesli: “I just hope Vanessa fights and wins. I know that they’re going to do everything they can to knock her down and make her give up. And I hope she doesn’t. I hope she continues, and I hope she makes it to the end and makes it worthwhile.”
source: people.com
