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The Velvet Hammer™ Podcast
Trial lawyers can be real people, too—and this podcast proves it. The Velvet Hammer™ is back, and this time, Karen Koehler isn’t going it alone. Known for her fearless advocacy, bold storytelling, and, yes, even the occasional backwards dress moment, Karen is teaming up with Mo Hamoudi, a lawyer, poet, and storyteller whose empathy and resilience add a whole new dynamic to the show.
Together, they’re pulling back the curtain on trial law, diving into bold topics, heartfelt stories, and the messy, hilarious moments that make trial lawyers human. This is an unscripted, raw, and fun take on life inside—and outside—the courtroom.
The Velvet Hammer™ Podcast
The Punk Move: When Abusers Use SLAPP Suits to Silence Survivors
🎙️ Episode 19: The Punk Move: When Abusers Use SLAPP suits to Silence Survivors
What happens when the accused turns around and sues the person making the accusation? Karen and Mo dive into the disturbing rise of SLAPP suits — lawsuits filed by powerful defendants to intimidate, drain, and silence sexual abuse survivors.
These lawsuits are calculated moves designed to scare survivors into silence by weaponizing the legal system. This episode explores how money, status, and power are leveraged to silence those who speak out.
Karen calls it a punk move. Mo breaks down the strategy behind it. Together, they explore why this tactic is so common in sex abuse cases and how it discourages survivors from coming forward.
#SLAPPSuit #TheVelvetHammer #KarenKoehler #MoHamoudi #LegalPodcast
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Hosted by Karen Koehler and Mo Hamoudi, trial lawyers at Stritmatter Law, a nationally recognized plaintiff personal injury and civil rights law firm based in Washington State.
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Here's what I want to talk about.
Mo Hamoudi :What do you want to talk?
Karen Koehler :about. I want to talk about publicly known litigation and a tactic that raises my hackles and raises my suspicions about people Hackles.
Mo Hamoudi :What does a hackle mean? A hackle, well, you've got to look this up. Okay, let me see what it is.
Karen Koehler :So this is from my old English lit days. Okay, so you have a typically a very powerful celebrity or well-known male almost always a male and then you have a on the opposite side you have normally a very young or some other female that has accused them of rape or assault or something, and then what happens is the PR machines take over.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes.
Karen Koehler :Okay, I get that the PR machine is going to take over. However, then a second thing happens.
Mo Hamoudi :What's the second thing?
Karen Koehler :The person that's being sued now sues the person suing them.
Mo Hamoudi :Ah, yeah.
Karen Koehler :They weaponize their defense.
Mo Hamoudi :It's called an anti-slap suit.
Karen Koehler :And some states have anti-slap and some don't.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes.
Karen Koehler :And do you know what that means?
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, it's basically meant to gag the lawsuit, gag the person from coming forward with their accusations.
Karen Koehler :Yeah, and it's become very prevalent.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes.
Karen Koehler :And sometimes I'm thinking, you know, because we're the court of public opinion, I'm thinking, well, I can't believe that about that, that that guy would have done that. Right, you might be thinking I can't believe that guy would have done that, but as soon as they file that lawsuit against the person suing them number one, I don't like it. And number two, I start having my doubts of whether they did something or not.
Mo Hamoudi :Wait, wait, wait. Okay, let me unpack that. Whether they did something or not, are you talking about the accuser or the accused?
Karen Koehler :The accused.
Mo Hamoudi :So you start to think the accused becomes the pursuer.
Karen Koehler :The accused turns the tables and becomes the aggressor. And here's the other thing. Normally the person that's suing the accused has very limited means and normally the accused I'm talking about this particular type of lawsuit has extraordinary means. There are many times over 100 millionaires, or there are billionaires, yes, and they're suing this little person that dared to say that they did something bad to them and they call it a shakedown. They claim that they're trying to bribe them Now. Sometimes they are Now, sometimes they are. There's a difference between trying to settle with someone pre-suit and then trying to buy someone by threatening to go public if they don't pay me for something that didn't happen.
Mo Hamoudi :Well, that's called extortion.
Karen Koehler :Extortion, but in these lawsuits the word extortion is almost always used.
Mo Hamoudi :Yes.
Karen Koehler :And this is what I want to talk about.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, let's talk about it Okay so.
Mike Todd:Can I interrupt for a minute? Don't you feel, though, that that tactic has been used so much, like you said, that it kind of makes you question whether or not something's happened? But I feel like, in my experience, it's almost always done by the, like you said, the more well-off whether it's a corporation or an individual that they have the means to do it, and they use that as a tactic, no matter what.
Karen Koehler :It didn't used to be this much. I'm starting to see this rash. It's almost always these sexual assault cases where you start to see it. It's like, okay, let's imagine this. Imagine that you were abused in the Catholic church for years and then some time passed and you went and sued the Catholic church and then the Catholic Church sued you for daring to bring the charge. That doesn't happen, right? Most of the cases we bring, we allege somebody did something and the insurance company is defending it and they don't sue back. What's happening are these individuals who are worried because their personhood that's what their income is dependent upon. So they're going to lose advertisers, they're not going to have movie opportunities, they're going to be shunned in the music, Whatever it is. Right now Diddy is on trial. I don't know if he's been suing his accusers.
Mike Todd:Yeah, I don't know either.
Karen Koehler :He's got his hands full, but other people have and I don't want to name names or anything like that, although we could and even in this whole thing with Blake Lively and Justin Balzoni. That's different than this, because they're more.
Mike Todd:she's got way more money and power than he does.
Karen Koehler :Yeah, but he still does, and so that one is really a tip. That's kind of an anomaly. Those are two people that have the means to go at each other. One are arguably more successful than the other, but they're more on par.
Mike Todd:And that was similar to the Johnny Depp case as well.
Karen Koehler :Johnny Depp case, more similar, but not really.
Karen Koehler :Not exactly Amber Heard was, you know again, you know, pretty unequal. But then you look at like Jay-Z I mean that's one of the more recent ones. I know we talked about Shannon Sharp. We talked about Shannon Sharp, these extremely powerful people who, if you dare to say they did something wrong to you. They are going to come after you and maybe it's going to be so scary you're going to say I don't want to be part of this, I'm going to drop this lawsuit. And now they're going to defame you and say it never happened and they're going to come after you and ruin you in the court of public opinion and everything else. I mean. So there is no reason to do that lawsuit other than to destroy someone, the big, powerful person going against a little person. Because normally when you bring a lawsuit civilly right, you're trying to get some kind of justice, whatever that is, and for us we're always going backwards. It's the little guy going against the powerful because they did something wrong and they hurt us, the little guy, and we want some kind of accountability for that.
Karen Koehler :This is a different use of the legal process. It's not being used for justice itself, it's being used for the court of public opinion because you know you're never going to get a dime out of the person you're suing. I mean right, that's not the purpose. It's a punk move. Whenever I see it, that's what I call it. I said this is a punk move. I don't like it. It's becoming very common and that's what I wanted to talk about.
Mo Hamoudi :Like defend that? Well, I mean, I'll tell you like, first of all, the people who are being sued are not going. Oh yeah, now I'm going to sue. What is happening is that they're hiring lawyers and the lawyers are saying all right, what's the story right now? And I need to seize and control this story and turn the story and start rewriting the story. So this is a mechanism of like lawyer technique and really what I would call savvy lawyers use this as a technique to seize back the narrative and put the other side on the defensive. And when you're in the defensive, my experience has been you don't make good decisions. You're just not thinking through the case in a way in which you want to be in control of the case. And so, yeah, it is a punk move, but it is a strategic move because they want to put the person who's saying look at me, I'm the protagonist, no, you're not. You're actually a little bit more complicated. You're maybe pro-tag, anti-tag, and that's the idea.
Karen Koehler :So you think that it's okay.
Mo Hamoudi :I'm not saying it's okay, I'm saying that it's a strategy.
Mo Hamoudi :I don't fundamentally agree with it.
Mo Hamoudi :Because, in particular, when you're talking about someone who is vulnerable, who has taken the leap of courage to come up and say, hey, I've been abused or I've been marginalized, and then you come out and do that Now I almost invite that kind of technique.
Mo Hamoudi :If I'm representing the marginalized person, I invite it because I will weaponize what they did and beat them over the head with it. I think that moves like that will reveal themselves. I think where they are effective, karen, is when you don't have a good case, because if it's really effective, you never had a good case to begin with the accusation, there were problems with it and you didn't properly vet and prepare the accusation to be revealed in a court of law in the first instance, because some of this stuff works and it's because the accusation was be revealed in a court of law in the first instance, because some of this stuff works and it's because the accusation was not solid. So it's not about like sometimes you know, just it reveals the truth of the accusation. So I don't know. I mean, if you were accused of something, wouldn't you want to come out and say wait a minute, that's not true just prove it in your case.
Karen Koehler :Why do you have to come out and separately sue someone?
Mo Hamoudi :Well, what if you know in your heart that it's not true?
Karen Koehler :Then you say it's not true and prove it.
Mo Hamoudi :But then you are like paying money for a lawyer to have to defend an accusation.
Mike Todd:That's not accurate, I don't agree.
Mo Hamoudi :Well then, so what are you supposed to do? Just sit back and just go through the process?
Karen Koehler :I think you sit back and you fight the process and prove yourself. Okay, let's say this you represent someone right. And it's a federal public defender.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay.
Karen Koehler :And the government says you did this and you're like, yeah, this is false, you don't get to go sue them. You have to wait till the case is over, prove you're innocent and then go sue them.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, because that's For abuse of process. Yeah, but that process is totally different. But within the process I have gone back and accused them of wrongdoing within the process.
Karen Koehler :Within the process? Yes, okay, so then— and I don't even like process- Wait, what do you mean?
Mo Hamoudi :But I guess—.
Karen Koehler :This is just one of these things that drives me crazy.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, well, what drives you crazy about it?
Karen Koehler :I think it's abusive For someone to come out with that much power and use the justice system to annihilate someone, that you know what. Everyone has the right to do everything. There's bad lawyers. There's good lawyers. Everybody has a right to file a lawsuit.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, I just think that when somebody does that and you have a strong case, it's just telling that they're weak and you take it, come on, they're going to do it. I don't agree with it, but they're going to do it anyways.
Karen Koehler :No, I don't go with that. You can't say that you don't agree with it, but it's okay. That's not a good answer.
Mo Hamoudi :I object, you object? Okay, all right, I think I'm thinking about it as a lawyer and let me think about it as a non-lawyer.
Karen Koehler :Here's what I'm doing. I'm putting you in an impossible situation with something that was just bugging me on the way here. Yeah, because I saw it in the paper and it's like it just keeps happening, happening, happening. I think it's repulsive, I don't like it and I'm telling it to you and you're defending it, which I want you to do because I think it's indefensible.
Mo Hamoudi :I mean, I don't know about indefensible, mike.
Karen Koehler :I mean if you're attacked and you know that the attack on you lacks total credibility and your lawyer says— you bring a CR-11 sanction violation, you take it to the court and have the court say this is a meritless lawsuit and have it thrown out.
Mo Hamoudi :Wouldn't you want your reputation defended on the offensive, Mike, rather than from the defensive position, by having somebody file a suit and say you know?
Mike Todd:I would have to say yes if I knew that I was wrong, but I also feel that I mean, you know, I can look at our own president as an example of someone who uses that tactic every single time he has a case brought up against him.
Mike Todd:And I won't say that I know that he's done some of the stuff that he's accused of, but I think that it's telling when that tactic is used every time automatically and I just think that I don't want to use the term that he has started using but when our justicism is weaponized in the way that it seems to be getting weaponized more and more these days against the marginalized individuals. It's another way that attorneys get a bad name. Yeah, and I think that you know the people that use that don't care that they have a bad name. They don't mind, they don't have any problem with being perceived as bad people because they think they're doing what they need to do for their clients. Yeah, which is part of what you guys promise to do when you become lawyers. That's right, that's right, but I also feel that always going to that automatically makes the rest of the public go. Lawyers suck.
Karen Koehler :And I would never want to bring a lawsuit against someone that's more powerful than me.
Mike Todd:No, that's the thing I mean. Before I worked here, I always thought there's no reason in any situation to get a lawyer because I can't afford to get one. That would be good enough to make sure that I want so. And that's the same with most people that I know they get. In any situation that they get into which may involve the need for an attorney, they often don't think that they're good enough for it.
Mo Hamoudi :That's. I like the way Mike just talked about that because, like the technique that you're talking about about, and if the public sees it as like, wait a minute, if I ever think about bringing a lawsuit that could happen to me, right, and then they go, I don't want to talk to a lawyer, I don't want to deal with that. That's embarrassing and humiliating and stressful. That I agree with you. In that sense it is anti-access to justice. It creates a disincentive to want to access the system. I think I agree with that.
Karen Koehler :I think I'm persuaded that in that light, there was a great attorney, Bruce Johnson, here, who championed anti-SLAPP for sex abuse cases in Washington state. I can't remember if it passed or not, but with that exception, because it is heavily used in sex abuse cases and you know, there are so many mechanisms already in place. There's something called mandatory counterclaims and mandatory cross claims, which means you don't even need. Why do you need to file a separate lawsuit? Which means you don't even need it. Why do you need to file a separate lawsuit? A mandatory counterclaim means I sue you for X and then you sue me. You say, well, you did this to me. It goes, you did this to me, I'm suing you, I'm suing you.
Mo Hamoudi :You did this to me.
Karen Koehler :You come back and you sue me in the same case, but these guys are filing totally separate actions.
Mo Hamoudi :And I wonder, I mean I don't know. I mean if it's happening or you saw something in the newspaper that you saw this happen, it's just a constant litany.
Karen Koehler :It's all the time. I'm just seeing that it's becoming more and more common, and it's probably been becoming more and more common in the past five years and now it's every time.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, let's say you and I represent somebody, and this is a marginalized person, and we bring a lawsuit against Big Goliath, big Big Goliath.
Karen Koehler :Oh, let's stay away from that topic.
Mo Hamoudi :Like the big guy we can't talk about this.
Karen Koehler :What are you talking about? Sex abuse case?
Mo Hamoudi :yeah, it's a hypothetical sex abuse, okay, like big, big person. And then the big person goes to another court files, another lawsuit, okay, what do we do? Do we just sit there and like go no, no, what do we do? What do we do strategically? Well, but the no, no, what do we do? What do we do strategically?
Karen Koehler :Well, but the problem is, for the little person is most plaintiff. Firms are small. There's only so many resources.
Mo Hamoudi :So we have us and we represent the little person. What do we go tell this little person? Give up.
Karen Koehler :No.
Mo Hamoudi :Okay, what do we say?
Karen Koehler :We'll go over there too.
Mo Hamoudi :We'll go over there too, Okay.
Karen Koehler :But how many people can do that?
Mike Todd:Not many.
Mo Hamoudi :Not many.
Karen Koehler :And the resources are huge. So here, number one you almost only see this in sex abuse cases. That's where you see it, because in sex abuse cases people are more vulnerable because, unless you were recording it with the video, it's between two people or a few people. There's not a lot of witnesses. Normally in a sex abuse case, as you know, there's a perpetrator, alleged perpetrator and the person that's being victimized. That's it. So there's like how do you prove that? We have that right now? Right, we have a lot of issues in cases that are old and involve sex abuse. You can't, it's hard to prove it.
Mike Todd:So yes, well, and then add up to if there was anyone else present during the situation, that's on the side of the accused. The accuser automatically has people that are backing up the person that she's accusing or he's accusing.
Karen Koehler :The defense will do several things. One they'll attack that person and say they're mentally in fit, they're mentally in sound, they're making this up. I mean, it's like a playbook, it's the same defense. So what I'm saying, though, is that's what we're seeing right now sex abuse cases but it's also a slippery slope.
Karen Koehler :OK, all right sex abuse cases, but it's also a slippery slope. Okay, all right. What happens if we were to sue John Doe for killing our client, for running over them on a sidewalk, and then that company turned around and sued us for suing them?
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah, yeah.
Mo Hamoudi :Well, talking about sex abuse, I think it's the nature of sex abuse and what it requires somebody to go through to talk about it, and so I think that suits are used in those cases because they want to make the accusing person go. The nature about sex abuse is that because you don't disclose it immediately and the's because you don't disclose it immediately and the reason why you don't disclose it immediately has nothing to do about whether or not it happened to you. It's that you feel utterly alone in a secret that you're keeping, because you have to keep this secret and you think that you can't disclose the secret. And then something happens in your life and you feel that you can share it with somebody. Or you go through a process and then you realize, oh, I can do something about this.
Mo Hamoudi :What happened to me was not right, and you have to sum up all of this courage to come and speak about it openly, publicly, in documents, in the courtroom. Now what the defense is doing there is they're going. I know you came originally from a place where this was a secret and I want you to go back to that place.
Karen Koehler :Correct.
Mo Hamoudi :Right, and here you go, and here's this suit. Go back to that place. Go back to that place, and I think that that is the disgusting part of this technique. That's what the lawyer is doing is to force you back into that dark place, to that space that you're utterly alone. Here are the consequences for coming out and speaking about this, and you want to speak more. It's going to cost you even more.
Karen Koehler :And look at the. It's not just the power. In terms of money dynamics, there's often a huge age difference.
Mo Hamoudi :Yeah.
Karen Koehler :I mean. So the person that's being victimized does not have a lot of life experience and is, you know? And plus, with sex abuse cases there's shame, you know. Yes, so there's a lot of complexities in there.
Mo Hamoudi :But also when you're like, if you're experiencing sex abuse as a minor, you don't remember details like you would as an adult. Things you remember are different, even though it's true that it happened. And so when somebody comes out and says, well, no, you're a liar and you have defamed me, and then you start to question your own reality and you start to lose your mind and you start to think that, like, wait a minute, was it exactly like that? That's the intention is to start to question, plant the seed in your brain that these are all illusions, this didn't really happen to you.
Mo Hamoudi :And then what that does is that, as the abused person, you're going to your lawyer, going, maybe this wasn't a good idea. I don't know if I want to do this. Are you sure it's a good idea? And you start to doubt yourself. And so I think that you know, yeah, I mean that is a punk move. The more I think about it, it angers me. I mean I changed it. I mean I just didn't think about it. Through that lens, through that process, I just had to sort of it's bully behavior.
Karen Koehler :It's a punk move and it's become normal.
Mike Todd:Well, don't you also think in a way, it's taking the power that the accused wielded over the person and using it against them?
Karen Koehler :again, let's say that it's even. Let's say that the person that sued them isn't 100 right, but there's some truth in there, but not 100 right, um, and let's say that. But that person, of course, is like 20 years older than and and about you know, 15 million times poorer than the person they're suing. Let's just go down that road so, and let's say that drugs were involved. That's where I was going to go too, or alcohol was involved or you know anything else that comes into some of these behaviors.
Mike Todd:Which is going to affect their memory or possibly create memories that they didn't actually have.
Karen Koehler :For both sides, yeah for both sides, yeah for both sides. And then they approach the guy and say you know, I remember this and this isn't right, and maybe they're in counseling or something and they were told to confront their accuser.
Karen Koehler :I mean who knows? We don't know right, we don't know what goes on and the person that they confront just blows them off. That's when you typically see a lawsuit. A lawsuit typically doesn't just come out of the blue. It typically comes when someone has and this is true for, like a car accident case, for example, if the person that hits you is going to visit you in the hospital and take care of you know, like what can I do to help you and do everything that they can from day one, you feel very differently about them than if they don't even send you a get well card. After a month you know in hospital, when you no longer can use your legs, and they decline to pay any of your medical bills ever until there's a judge that orders them to do so at the end of a case, after a jury has entered their verdict. I mean, that's what it looks like.
Karen Koehler :So if people acknowledge you and help you and you don't, you know and see you and care for you, you don't really why would you need a lawyer? Why would a person need a lawyer If someone's going to say I'm sorry that I caused you this terrible stuff? I'm going to do right by you. Let's work it out, okay, you don't need a lawyer. Let's work it out. Okay, you don't need a lawyer, you need a lawyer. Well, you see the lawyers coming in is because you need help. You can't get any help whatsoever. The person has iced you. They won't talk to you because insurance companies say don't talk that's what I was going to say.
Mike Todd:The insurance companies almost always insurance companies.
Karen Koehler :They stop everything from happening and you have no other options. You're going to, you're going to take a lawsuit and you're going to stay in that lawsuit if, instead of paying your claim quickly, they start to do surveillance on you even when you're coming out of a hospital.
Mike Todd:Dig into your social media and your past.
Karen Koehler :Yeah, they demand to see everything.
Mike Todd:They talk to all your old girlfriends and try to get crazy questions about your sex life.
Karen Koehler :Oh, my God, and you know that's when you're going to file a lawsuit, or really, you know, stick, stick to a lawsuit, because you're so, what else are you going to do? You're so, you're so pumped, yeah. So here we have it like this, this whole thing, it has become very normalized. Um, I mean, I just keep seeing it happen time and time and time again. And then what's really sad is when the smaller persons, just their, their lawyer, gives up because now what are they supposed to do? They're supposed to prosecute a lawsuit and defend a lawsuit against them, like, and they didn't set out to do that. So maybe I don't feel so sorry for their lawyer, but their lawyer, and maybe because maybe their lawyer could have gotten more help or something, but may, and you know what, there are times when people bring false allegations yeah, that's clearly.
Mike Todd:Then there's always that I don't think that it happens nearly as much as the accused want you to think, but it has happened it has happened yeah, it has happened.
Mo Hamoudi :I mean, no, it's, it's. I think that I would be interested to see the cases that are being used on, and it's primarily that sexual abuse cases I think that's the problem almost entirely, entirely, those like if it's a corporation suing another corporation I could care less.
Mo Hamoudi :But you know it's like oh, you did another suit against the corporation, oh. But I think that the dynamic of sexual abuse, it's where it's most prevalent and it has to do with the power of the abuser over the abused. It is leveraging that dynamic and saying like I still have power over you, Don't forget that. And it's the lawyer knows that. And if a lawyer ever did that in one of my cases, I call him up and I tell him you're a punk, because you just taught me that word.
Karen Koehler :Yes, that's my thought for today.
Mo Hamoudi :That's's a good thought. That's a good thought. Yeah, feel lucky punk. That's a short one.
