According to the Roseburg News-Review, “Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin got caught with his pants down.”
A photo that appears to be revenge porn has been circulating in Roseburg showing Hanlin, an elected official, pants-less in only a T-shirt with the words “Lit Saturday” over his genitals. Another photo shows the sheriff giving the middle finger.
The paper reports that Hanlin said “the photo was taken in private at his own residence” and “the photo was published on a website that mimicked his own personal Facebook page and was likely posted by an ex-girlfriend.”
Hanlin made national headlines in 2015 after the Umpqua Community College shooting that killed 10 people, including the shooter, when he refused to say the shooter’s name and encouraged the media and community not to use it as well.
The recent Facebook photo is not the first time Hanlin has been involved in a social media controversy. In 2013, after the Sandy Hook shooting that killed 20 children and six adults, Hanlin posted a conspiracy video to Facebook that “suggested the Newtown, Connecticut, tragedy might have been staged by the federal government to provide a pretext for ‘disarming the public’ and that grieving parents were actually ‘crisis actors.'” That stance that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax was thrust into the limelight after Umpqua.
Hanlin gave a full statement to the News-Review, which can be seen here. In the statement he says that an ex-girlfriend posted the photo on a Facebook site intended to appear as if the Facebook site was his, and he “did not authorize the photo.”