Refuge's campaign to criminalise threats to share intimate images

[ArabellaScott]

I think it's okay to link to a campaign?

Ths is part of the Domestic Abuse bill, it's dead easy to add your name and details to the letter to share with relevant politicians, and seems a sensible addition.

Letter text:

'I am writing to urge you to criminalise threatening to share intimate and sexual images. This is a very important issue to me and a recent report by Refuge highlights the impact on domestic abuse survivors and the prevalence of this problem in society today. I implore you to act to extend the law to protect survivors from this type of abuse as part of the Domestic Abuse Bill.

Refuge has found that 1 in 14 adults in England and Wales, equivalent to 4.4 million people, have experienced threats to share their intimate images or videos. Young women, aged 18-34, are disproportionately impacted, with 1 in 7 having experienced such threats.

This is a domestic abuse issue - 72% of women that experienced threats to share were threatened by their current or former partner.

This form of abuse can have an enormous impact on mental health and emotional wellbeing, shockingly, 1 in 10 women who had experienced threats to share their images felt suicidal as a result.

Sharing an intimate or sexual image or film without consent is a crime; yet threatening to do so is not. This leaves millions of people living in fear.

Extending section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 to criminalise threats to share sexual images or films without consent, with the intent to cause distress, is a straight-forward change to the law, that will provide much needed additional protection for survivors of domestic abuse.

Will you act now to protect survivors of domestic abuse and end image-based abuse? '

campaign.refuge.org.uk/page/63006/

[thinkingaboutLangCleg]

Done. Thanks for printing the text, Arabella — easy to copy into an email.

[ArabellaScott]

Great stuff, thinking! The link goes to a letter that sends it to Priti Patel, Alex Chalk, Victoria Atkins and Robert Buckland, if you choose. Are you sending to MPs, too?

[MerchedCymru]

Thanks Arabella - have responded and shared on our FB page. Will also send the letter to my MP.

I think I read somewhere that the CPS are disinclined to add this in to the bill. Do you know if that's the case? And if so, why?

[HecatesCats]

Thanks Arabella, will take a look at this tomorrow

[ArabellaScott]

Sorry, Merched, I don't know anything beyond what is in the letter from Refuge.

All I can find that seems not in favour is this:

'Home Office minister Baroness Williams of Trafford said threats to disclose images are “in many circumstances already captured by a range of existing offences”, adding the Law Commission is conducting a review of the law in this area.'

Seems it's already criminalised in Scotland?

www.grampianonline.co.uk/news/national/make-threatening-to-share-revenge-porn-a-criminal-offence-peers-urge-10219/

'

[thinkingaboutLangCleg]

Yes, I've sent it to my MP, who usually backs good causes -- apart from women's sex-based rights, sad to say.

[ArabellaScott]

Mine's the same, sadly.

[MerchedCymru]

Thanks Arabella - that was probably what I read. 'In many circumstances' doesn't seem very reassuring does it? Hope the campaign is successful.

[ArabellaScott]

Yes, let's hope so. Looking forward to seeing how the whole bill shapes up.

[highame]

done