A dish served cold: targeting revenge in revenge pornography

Abstract

The introduction of s 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, criminalising the disclosure of private sexual images, has been seen as a welcome step forward for curbing this abuse of privacy and the harmful effects it has on victims. However, while s 33 sidesteps any reference to ‘revenge pornography’, as the phenomenon has been termed in popular vernacular, little attention has been paid to the way in which narratives of revenge implicitly underpin and imbue the new offence, particularly its specific intent requirement. We argue this has serious implications for the treatment of s 33 offences in the courts and for sentencing. Drawing on cross-disciplinary conceptualisations of revenge, its recent criminal-legal history, and examples of media and parliamentary rhetoric, we claim that despite innumerable attempts to turn debate on disclosure of private sexual images towards consent, harm and privacy, there lurks within these discourses an assumption that the victim must have done something to deserve the treatment she received. Until the multiple harms of disclosure of private sexual images are recognised and explicit recommendations are made that scrutiny of victims’ behaviour should normally be inadmissible, we argue that the offence offers little in the way of redress.

Seeking Justice and Redress for Victim-Survivors of Image-Based Sexual Abuse

“…Our research, therefore, supports the criticisms of the existing laws and the calls for reform that have been made by academics, stakeholders and victim-survivors alike (see e.g. Gillespie 2015;North Yorkshire Police and Fire Commissioner 2018;Gallagher 2019;Gillespie 2019;Dymock and van der Westhuizen 2019). It is vital that the criminal law moves away from the current ad hoc and piecemeal approach which fetishises specific forms of image-based sexual abuse.…”

“…Victim-survivors and stakeholders were clear that the current UK criminal law is consistently failing those who experience image-based sexual abuse. The law is confusing, inconsistent, unduly complex, out of date and difficult to prosecute, and contains many significant loopholes (Rackley and McGlynn 2018;Dymock and van der Westhuizen 2019;). In the following sections, we narrow our focus to concentrate on the accounts of the UK victim-survivor and stakeholder participants in order to examine several different strands through which image-based sexual abuse is, and might be, responded to in the UK.…”

Receiving threatening or obscene messages from a partner and mental health, self-harm and suicidality: results from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey

“…This includes the use in ‘revenge porn’ after a relationship ends. While popular discourse around the non-consensual sharing of sexual images has focussed on the motivations of a ‘jilted sexual partner’ [ 39 – 41 ], this analysis refocuses attention on the harms to victims.…”