A Virginia Democrat who was caught filming pornographic videos with her husband has been charged with assaulting him.

Susanna Gibson Payne, 42, was arrested for assault and battery of a family member on September 22, the New York Post reported. She was released after turning herself in.

X-rated scandal

Some may recall Payne's involvement in a porn scandal during her failed 2023 bid for the Virginia state legislature.

At the time, the nurse practitioner said her X-rated online performances had no bearing on her fitness for office, and she insisted her privacy had been illegally violated when the livestreams were archived on another website without her consent.

She and her lawyer husband allegedly collected money from the streams, which would have violated the porn site's policy.

“It won’t intimidate me and it won’t silence me,” she said at the time, casting herself as a victim.

“My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they’re willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up,” she added.

Playing the victim

Remarkably, Payne lost her race by fewer than 1,000 votes, and she went on to become an advocate for digital privacy. Nevertheless, she is clearly having some trouble keeping her messy personal life under wraps.

In the wake of her arrest, Payne is claiming her husband filed a retaliatory police complaint and that he is the one who assaulted her during a June 2025 incident.

“After my estranged husband, arrested three times since I filed for divorce, assaulted me during a June 2025 custody exchange while I protected our son, he filed a retaliatory criminal complaint against me,” Payne said.

“More than three months later, police issued a misdemeanor warrant for my arrest. I turned myself in immediately,” she added.

In comments to the Post, John David Gibson, 44, denied pressing charges against his wife and insisted he never caused her harm.

"I adamantly deny any claim that I got physically 'aggressive' much less assaulted Susanna during the June incident. The police from my understanding determined the same," he said.

“There was no retaliation – I don’t even know what I would be retaliating against,” he said.

According to the Post, Gibson was arrested in December for violating a protective order. Gibson said he got into a heated argument with his wife's new boyfriend over text, but Gibson said he "was never arrested, much less convicted of a protective order violation involving Susanna."

While Payne claims her husband assaulted her, she is the one facing charges for that crime, not him. We also have a past example of Payne making herself the victim in a scandalous scenario that she caused with her own poor judgment.

Are the police wrong, or is Payne just trying to dodge accountability again?