Officially made a criminal offence in 2015, revenge porn includes any ‘sharing’ of private, sexual photographs or films, and any threats to do so. Despite the government’s ‘Be Aware B4 You Share’ campaign, revenge porn is still rife, seeing a 106% rise in cases between 2022 and 2023 according to Revenge Porn Helpline. Whilst instances increase, rates of charges amongst offenders remains abysmally low, recent reports recording charges in less than 5% of cases.
Although legislation is a step in the right direction, its loose definition and deficient enforcement leave room for the issue to fester further. For instance, what counts as ‘sharing’? What if a man shows his friend an explicit image of his ex-girlfriend on his phone, an exchange which is virtually improvable but could have happened several times?
Ownership of the content is the root of the problem, so why hasn’t it been addressed in the government’s attempt at a solution?
Police enforcement of the crime is so unthorough that this is a very plausible possibility. Because even if the offender is prosecuted for sharing revenge porn, that content is not confiscated from them. Ownership of the content is the root of the problem, so why hasn’t it been addressed in the government’s attempt at a solution?
Given that the offender has legal ownership and copyright over the content, as demonstrated by Harrison in her documentary ‘Georgia Harrison: Porn, Power, Profit’, once shared, the content can often only be removed by the offender themselves. Even then, the possibility of the content disappearing entirely is slim to none.
Possession of private or explicit content – whether consensual or nonconsensual – also allows for the imposing of ‘sextortion’, an act of blackmailing an individual using the threat of sharing the images or videos. This aspect of manipulation is outlined in revenge porn legislation, but is not falsifiable: without physical records, which there is most often not, there is no way to prove or disprove that this blackmail did or didn’t take place, meaning it is essentially not prosecutable under current laws.
Even if we were to ignore the possible implications of sharing Revenge Porn, there is still a victim who must suffer the undeniable emotional damage of simply knowing that content exists, its fate outside of their control.
Similar to most sexual offence accusations, the odds are decidedly not in revenge porn victims’ favour.