It has been revealed that in the first nine months of 2023, the Revenge Porn Helpline received reports from more than 10,000 people, a worrying rise of 31 per cent compared to the same period last year.
But are we seeing a growing problem, or is an increased spotlight on this issue now, which is encouraging more people to understand image-based abuse (commonly referred to as revenge porn), and come forward to report this crime?
I would argue the latter – however, much more still needs to be done to tackle this horrendous type of abuse, and to ensure those impacted understand their legal rights.
Especially as statistics suggest the problem is much more widespread than those who make the decision to report – according to Refuge’s ‘The Naked Threat’ report, one in seven young women aged between 18 and 34 having experienced threats to share intimate images.
The majority (72%) of threats to share intimate images are made against women by current or ex-partners.
So what are your legal rights if an ex-partner, or someone else, has shared intimate images of you without your consent? Here’s what you need to know:
It should now be easier to secure a conviction
In June of this year, new measures were announced, amending the Online Safety Bill to protect victims of revenge porn.
This law change means that prosecuting lawyers no longer need to prove that perpetrators shared sexual images or films in order to cause distress. This means perpetrators will no longer be able to claim that it was a ‘joke’, to cruelly use the photos for their own dating profiles, for the purpose of sexual gratification, or to tell the police that they ‘didn’t mean it’. I believe this change is very likely to significantly increase the number of convictions for these offences.
Sharing deepfaked images is now an offence
Deepfake porn is a growing problem. Figures this year found that deepfake pornography makes up 98% of all deepfake videos online, with a 550% increase in the volume of deepfakes online from 2019 to 2023. I fear we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg of this problem. Thankfully we did see a law change this year, which, for the first time, criminalised the sharing of deep fake intimate images. However a glaring gap in this law is that creating the images in the first place is not currently an offence.
It can be tricky to get content taken down – but there are things you can do
Survivors of revenge porn often ask how they can find their images, and how they can report them to platforms to have them removed or taken down.
It’s really scary to find out that your images have been shared, and not knowing where they might be, or who might have seen them.
Unfortunately, the law as it currently stands doesn’t make it easy to get images removed but there are steps which can be taken to contact sites and have your private data removed.
The starting point is to try to find out where they have been published – a reverse image search can be helpful here. Once you have done this, you can make requests to individual sites to takedown the image. Usually, you are able to report the image(s) or videos from the posts or photos themselves. Any costs involved in this process can be recouped as part of a civil claim.
You can take legal action against the individual and platform
If you have suffered image-based sexual abuse you may be able to bring a claim against the person who did this to you or against the website or platform, or both. This will depend on the circumstances of your case. A specialist lawyer will be able to advise you on the most appropriate option to recover the maximum compensation.
Ultimately it is important to remember that revenge porn is a crime and the current maximum available sentence for revenge porn offences is two years’ imprisonment.
Earlier this year, former reality TV star Stephen Bear was convicted and sent to prison for 21 months for revenge porn offences.
The law is also changing all the time, and whilst the changes this year feel like the UK Government is finally catching up with the key issues of image-based sexual abuse, there are still some gaps which urgently need to be addressed to ensure people are protected from this type of abuse.
Emma Ferguson-Law, Senior Solicitor in the Abuse Claims Team at Bolt Burdon Kemp.