Homestead police have arrested a 23-year-old man on charges including aggravated stalking, written threats to kill or cause bodily injury, and sexual cyberharassment after his ex-girlfriend reported he created an unauthorized OnlyFans-style page using her name and posted nude photos of her without her consent.
According to Homestead Police Department, the woman told officers that her ex-boyfriend, Garrett Whitney, began a pattern of harassment after their more than two-year relationship ended last month. She said he called and texted her from numerous phone numbers, sometimes hundreds of times in a single day, and drove past her home in different vehicles to monitor her visitors and activities.
Investigators said Whitney told the woman in a message that he intended to set up an account in her name. She later discovered the page had been created and contained intimate photographs of her that he had never received permission to share. Under Florida law, distributing sexually explicit images of a person without consent and with intent to cause substantial emotional distress is a criminal offense, and the state charges such conduct as sexual cyberharassment.
Police said the situation escalated on September 3, when Whitney sent the woman a text stating he was going to kill her. Officers said he made similar statements that same evening during a child custody exchange after growing angry that she had ignored his calls, telling her that if she would not be with him, she would not be with anyone else.
The written threat charge stems from those text messages, which investigators say met the legal standard for a credible, specific threat of violence under Florida law. The aggravated stalking charge covers the pattern of repeated, unwanted contact and surveillance the woman described over the course of about a month. The sexual cyberharassment charge addresses the creation and posting of the intimate images themselves, an offense Florida added to its statutes specifically to give victims of so-called revenge porn a path to prosecution separate from harassment or stalking laws.
Whitney was taken into custody Thursday night at a market on Southwest Eighth Street in Homestead. Records show the arrest coincided with a separate, unrelated narcotics investigation that Homestead police said had been underway since February, and Whitney also faces charges of cocaine trafficking and unlawful use of a communications device tied to that case.
A judge set a combined bond of $45,500 across the cases. In the domestic violence matter, conditions include Level 2 house arrest with GPS monitoring, meaning Whitney would remain confined to his residence with limited, court-approved exceptions if he posts bond. The drug case carries a Nebbia hold, which requires him to show that any money used to post bond comes from a legitimate source before he can be released.
BeezLoop News is not naming the victim, consistent with standard practice in cases involving stalking, threats, and the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images. Court and police records in such cases can technically identify a victim, but withholding the name is intended to prevent further exposure or retaliation against someone who has already reported being harassed and threatened.
Anyone experiencing stalking, threats, or the nonconsensual sharing of private images can contact local law enforcement or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
Sources: WPLG Local 10 · WSVN 7News
