Revenge porn

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Legal advice with revenge porn 

Revenge porn may take different forms and shapes. It may involve the one off posting of nude or intimate images of the victim or a long campaign of harassment and humiliation.

What is revenge porn

What if the victim of revenge porn gave consent to the posting

Can you commit revenge porn without publishing on the internet

How common is revenge porn in the UK

Can a victim of revenge porn remain anonymous

How to remove revenge porn from the internet

What is revenge porn

Revenge porn involves the sharing of private sexual images and videos with the intention to cause the victim to feel harassed. Revenge porn may also involve the posting of graphic material such as drawings of information that is sexually related. Revenge porn might involve the sharing of explicit sexual material offline, so the criminal offence is not necessarily confined to the internet.

Revenge porn therefore is a form of harassment that is aimed to humiliate the victim but despite this, it is possible to commit the offence by posting the revenge porn material to a third party without notifying the victim of the posting. In fact, it isn’t necessary for the victim to view or be able to view the revenge porn material. It is enough that it is posted and that the victim becomes aware of the existence of the revenge porn posts.

What if the victim of revenge porn gave consent to the posting

There might be a situation where the victim of revenge porn gave consent to the posting of the intimate images or videos and later had regrets about the consent to the publication. Publication is often an ongoing matter. It is possible for someone to give consent to the publication of porn images, perhaps in a limited form and object to the same publication to be available to a wider audience. It is also possible for the victim to change her mind and decide that she no longer wishes the publication to take place.

In this case, there is no longer consent and the publisher of the images or videos must remove them. This situation is likely to happen when there is a breakdown in the relationship between a couple and where there was a limited sharing of sexual images between them. If, for example they used to share images on WhatsApp, it would be natural for the victim to object to the images from being published and possibly shared with other people. Regardless of whether you consented to the images or videos being taken at the time, you can request that publication is stopped.

There might be good reasons for this. For example, you may not have understood the nature of the consent you gave or you might now feel shame, guilt or embarrassment about the prospect of the intimate image or video being shared with third parties.

Can you commit revenge porn without publishing on the internet

You might commit the criminal offence of revenge porn regardless of whether you published information online and offline.

You could commit revenge porn by showing sex images to anyone who is not authorised or who had not intended or asked to view them, including friends and family of the victim. Posting sexy images to someone's address will therefore fall under the category of revenge porn, if the intention of the posting was to cause the victim harassment and distress.

How common is revenge porn in the UK

It is difficult to tell how common revenge porn is in the UK, mainly because most victims are far too embarrassed to talk about their experiences as victims of revenge porn. Many revenge porn cases are resolved through the civil route, either after a solicitor gets involved or in other cases where the courts are asked to help. A solicitor will often send communications to the offender which will require the offender to take immediate steps to remedy the situation in return for anonymity.

Similarly, when the civil courts get involved, the solicitor acting for the revenge porn victim, will usually secure anonymity orders to ensure that the victim’s identity remains undisclosed. Many victims of revenge porn who speak to the police, decide eventually to withdraw their complaint because of fear that their identity will be disclosed.

There are therefore a variety of reasons why the general public never find out about the majority of revenge porn cases that happen in the UK.

Can a victim of revenge porn remain anonymous

It is possible for victims of revenge porn to remain anonymous. The police will often grant the victim anonymity but there is never a guarantee that there will be no mistakes and that the identity of the victim will not be accidently released. If this happens, it is unlikely that any mainstream media will publish the name of the victim but this cannot avoid the name being published by foreign websites. If happens, it the victim will most likely be required to request Google and other search engines to delist the name of the victim from search results in connection with the revenge porn material. A civil court may grant the victim anonymity and details of the victim, including the victim’s name, will not be published on official court papers.

How to remove revenge porn from the internet

If the revenge porn has been widely published on websites across the internet, there will need to be a concentrated effort to have the images or videos removed. This might involve contacting websites operators from across the world as well as in some cases police forces in other countries who will be able to, in some cases at least, help facilitate the removal of the revenge porn material from a variety of websites internationally.

The most challenging aspect of removing revenge porn from the internet, is removal from various discussion forums that are located in the US and which currently are covered by free speech constitutional rights. However, often there are ways to enforce removal of revenge porn from internet discussion forums by using a variety of laws, including local harassment laws and copyright laws. It is also possible to obtain disclosure orders to allow most of those internet discussion forums to provide disclosing information of the individual who posted the revenge porn material.

Bear in mind that if the poster of the revenge porn is from the UK, it is unlikely that he will be entitled to benefit from USA free speech protection laws as those laws often only protect US citizens. You will however, need to argue those points, before some of the popular website operators in the USA will agree to remove the revenge porn images from their website.