A new criminal law to tackle Revenge Porn was introduced in 2015 in England & Wales as part of the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. Section 33 covers the sharing of private sexual materials in either images or films of another person without their consent with the intent of causing harm or attempting to embarrass them.
In many cases of revenge porn, personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, links to their personal social media profiles and other private information has also been shared, which has led to serious harm to victims.
Revenge porn is a crime that can be committed both on and offline and applies to images and videos that can be exchanged electronically or in a more traditional way. This can mean either sharing them across a wide range of electronic devices, such as modern phones and computers, or in physical form, such as printed photographs.
What Will the Offence Cover?
The sharing of private, explicit images or films will be made illegal under the new law. Sexual material is classified as not only photographs and video which display the genitals, however anything a reasonable person would regard as being sexual. This means that it could also be images or videos of someone behaving in a sexually provocative manner, not just materials covering sexual acts or nudity.
Why Did Things Change?
The key difference is that there is now a particular offence for this behaviour, and those found guilty of it will face serious consequences. A person who commits the crime of using revenge porn to hurt another could get a prison sentence of up to two years.
Repeated harassment may be considered a crime under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Revenge porn would also fall under the Malicious Communications Act of 1988 as sending these materials either digitally or physically would cause distress and anxiety.
The Crown Prosecution Service modified its legal guidance to make it more apparent how such matters should be handled.
Under the new legislation, you can take your case to court. The CPS website has more information.
With cases like the case of Chrissy Chambers in which a celebrity youtuber became a victim of revenge porn becoming more and more common the law was changed in order to properly cover cases involving revenge porn.
In 2019, the revenge porn helpline assisted 1681 people, which rose by 87% in 2020, going up to a staggering 3146! This huge rise was probably not helped by the pressure put on people by lockdowns and the reliance of people on digital devices for communication during these times.
Currently some social media platforms are putting in even more safeguards to protect people against revenge porn with Facebook, now Meta leading the way.
Non-consensual images shared online can be shared to https://stopncii.org/ which will work hard to remove all non-consensual images online and help to protect people from harm and abuse. They have a 90% removal rate as of 10/02/2022.