Texas Man Suing Ex’s Friends Over Abortion Pills Threatened Wife With Revenge Porn

Brittni Silva, who is not a part of Marcus Silva's lawsuit, says her ex-husband dragging her into this court case is just "the latest abusive tactic."

By Caitlin Cruz  |  October 5, 2023 | 7:45pm
AbortionPolitics
Texas Man Suing Ex’s Friends Over Abortion Pills Threatened Wife With Revenge Porn
Photo:Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto (Getty Images)

Marcus Silva—the Texan suing his ex-wife’s friends for $1 million each after they allegedly provided her with abortion pills—is now accused of using the lawsuit to harass and extort his ex-wife, Brittni Silva, including threatening to release videos of them having sex on Pornhub.

In March, Marcus sued two of Brittni’s best friends, and a third woman, who he says helped Brittni obtain abortion pills to end a pregnancy. Notably, he didn’t file the suit under the “aiding and abetting” provision of the state’s chilling abortion ban; instead, he sued the women under Texas’s wrongful death statute. The friends countersued Silva in May, saying that Marcus knew about the abortion pills and his ex-wife’s plan and was just using his lawsuit to abuse her. Brittni is not a part of the original lawsuit but is being subpoenaed to provide communications.

On Tuesday, a new legal document filed in Galveston County, Texas asks the judge to dismiss the case, with Brittni’s lawyers calling Marcus’ lawsuit “the latest abusive tactic in a long line of steps he has taken to harass and control Brittni, his ex-wife.” (Brittni filed for divorce in May 2022 and it was finalized in February 2023.) If the judge won’t dismiss the case, the lawyers cited Brittni’s Fifth Amendment rights to ask that Brittni at least be excluded from needing to produce documents.

As part of the filing, Brittni provided more information—including text messages with her friends and transcripts of recorded conversations with Marcus—about the case and confirmed her friends’ claim that Marcus was well aware of her plan to take abortion medication. “So now he’s saying if I don’t give him my ‘mind body and soul’ until the end of the divorce which he’s going to drag out, he’s going to make sure I go to jail for [getting the abortion],” Brittni texted her friends in 2022.

And in a transcript of a conversation between Brittni and Marcus from June (months after the divorce was finalized), Marcus threatens to release an intimate video on Pornhub made during their marriage, linking to her workplace and sending it to family members. “I will fucking manipulate it into looking like you fucked all these different guys in different places if I fucking need to,” Marcus told Brittni, adding that he had already created PornHub titles for the video.

The conversation continues:

MARCUS SILVA:· Everyone who’s close to you. And I can send these videos to them in ways where it doesn’t show you until the very end. It – – – looks — you can’t even tell who it is. And they’ll watch it, they’ll enjoy it, and then at the last minute they’ll realize that it’s you.
BRITTNI SILVA: You’re fucking sick, dude. That’s fucking sick. What the fuck do you want, Marcus?
MARCUS SILVA: It’s — it’s calculated. It’s fucked up. It is fucked up. Trust me, I know.

The next day, according to the docs, Silva said he would spend “every fucking dollar that this organization gave me” to follow her and anyone she dated. Unless she slept with him again. (The organization is unnamed, but the filing suggests that the organization is paying Silva “perhaps as compensation for bringing this lawsuit.”)

Marcus also allegedly told Brittni he’d stop threatening legal action if she “play[ed] wife” aka had sex with him. “This is literally what we fucking agreed to in the first place whenever you sat there and said you weren’t gonna file a fucking lawsuit; therefore, we were gonna have sex. And I had sex with you, Marcus, even after you fucking put me through goddamn hell for that,” Brittni said, according to the transcript. She said agreed out of fear “for her and her young daughters’ wellbeing.” (The ex-couple shares two kids.)

A jury trial is set for May 2024, according to court records.

 
Join the discussion...