The trouble began for Adame in December, when someone took screenshots of him during one of those sessions. He thought he had some control over who was watching him, but he did not. “Our laws and contracts are changing but maybe not quick enough.”Īdame used webcam sites where users can perform on public or private channels and watch each other, identifying themselves only by screen names. In an interview, Adame did not defend his webcam use - he said he spent years in therapy, in part for compulsive sexual behavior - but he also said he thought there was a “generation gap” in attitudes toward online sex. In some of them, Adame apparently references his employer, but Adame declined to address the specific content of the performances or the images taken without his knowledge.Īdame said he believed the protracted, monthslong nature of the photo leaks led Spectrum to a breaking point. When asked what had changed between March and September to justify his firing, they referred a reporter to social media sites where images of Adame’s performances were circulating.
Neither person disputed Adame’s timeline of events. Two Spectrum employees familiar with the discussions that led to Adame’s firing said the decision had been complicated, and that the company worked with him for several months to avoid this outcome. She added: “There is a real question if as a public figure, in a position of trust, do you have a responsibility to keep certain things unseen?” “There is a potential mental health element, there is a victimization element, and there’s the fact that there are things done in private and things done in public and he just misjudged the line between the two.” “This is not clearly a win for any one side at all,” she said. She said his termination underscored what a “blurry time” we live in, when the internet has broadened the reach of normal people’s speech. Patricia Sánchez Abril, a professor of business law at the University of Miami, said Adame’s case was far from clear cut. Broadcast companies usually require on-air employees to sign contracts that contain morals clauses, which give them the power to fire employees for a wide range of behavior, from arrests to offensive tweets, that might harm the corporation’s public image. Adame also described his behavior as the manifestation of a mental health issue that drove him to perform for audiences of other men and engage in cybersex with anonymous people online for years, and then to seek psychiatric treatment.īut Adame’s case is also complicated by other factors, including his role as a television personality, an unusually public-facing position. Now, Adame finds himself at the center of a debate over whether employers should be policing their workers’ legal off-the-clock activities online - particularly at a time when many people’s sex lives are increasingly led on the internet, and as Americans have become more open-minded about sex in general.Īdame and his supporters have argued he is a victim - both of a prudish employer and of revenge porn, a growing problem that has affected as many as 10 million Americans and that was outlawed in New York in 2019. Celebrities and politicians rushed to his defense, including Cynthia Nixon, an actress and former candidate for New York governor Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou and Councilman Erik Bottcher. But in the wake of his firing, which he made public in a post on Instagram, a wave of support for him emerged online. The person who sent the pictures appeared to be determined to shame or harm Adame. Last week, after the latest round of pictures arrived, NY1 fired Adame. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times
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