Guest post: Revenge porn - 'I felt completely helpless'

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For six months last year, when I was 20, my ex would publish explicit pictures of me online to his blog.

He'd upload them, I'd find them, I'd beg him to take them down. He would apologise profusely and take them down. Then the whole cycle would start again a few weeks later. People could like, comment and share the images. There were images of other girls posted up there too, all with derogatory slurs attached to them. I didn't know their names, so I couldn't warn them about what he was doing.

It completely consumed me. I would search every day for the images daily to make sure I could get them down. Every time I begged him to remove them, he would be so apologetic. There was always an excuse, and he'd always try to turn the conversation around - he'd ask me how I was, whether he could call me. I was convinced that if I was civil to him, then maybe it would stop.

I didn't tell anyone for six months, because I was ashamed. I didn't know who to tell, or where to turn. My confidence was completely shattered, and it all felt endless. I was trapped. Eventually, I went to the police. The officer told me there wasn't much they could do. They could 'have a word' with him and file a domestic incident report, and that was it.

I had to do something, just to get it to end, bring it to a head. I decided to tell everyone I could. Going public with my story wasn't an act of bravery - it was an act of desperation. I wanted help.

The response I got was phenomenal. Friends contacted me to say they were scared of where their images would end up. One friend told me that a similar thing had happened to her, only she'd been too ashamed to tell anyone. Another said that when she was 16, a man had used footage of her to blackmail her in to sexual activities. It was horrifying.

I started researching and came across the term ‘revenge porn’. There were entire sites dedicated to revenge porn, that profited from the pain and misery of young women. It sickened me to know that people were actually seeking out images taken or uploaded without the subject's consent, that they had such a lack of respect for women.

I became convinced that it should be a criminal offence in itself, so I asked my friends to sign a petition and contact their MPs. The petition got over a thousand signatures within 24 hours and more people came forward to tell me their stories. Many had been too ashamed to go to the police, and often, the ones who had tried had been sent away. Some of the stories were from girls as young as 14 - they were too ashamed to tell their families and had nowhere to turn. Some had considered suicide because they felt so trapped.

Parliament listened. MPs like Julian Huppert and Maria Miller fought hard for change and they showed victims that they had nothing to be ashamed of. On Monday night, the House of Lords unanimously agreed to criminalise revenge porn – which means it is only a couple of steps away from becoming a specific criminal offence. The police will receive new guidelines and victims will be taken seriously.

I'm thrilled with the amendment. I hope victims will begin to realise that they have nothing to be ashamed of and I hope no one else has to feel the horrible, endless loneliness that I did. I hope perpetrators will give up their sick hobby, scared of proper retribution.

But the amendment alone is not enough. Victims need support and help to get their images down from sites that are built to profit from their pain. We need to be teaching teenagers that consent is vital in all areas of sexual activity, and that explicit images are not a tool to be used to harass, humiliate and blackmail others. I want young people to grow up knowing how much power those images can wield - they need to understand that not only will uploading non-consensual, explicit images of somebody have devastating consequences on the victim, it will also lead to a criminal record.

In February 2015, the government announced that posting "revenge porn" on the internet would indeed become a criminal offence.
You can find out more about their #NoToRevengePorn campaign here, and access their resources here.

Getting a bit personal their Damsilli. This imagined silencing isn't preventing you from spouting your wisdom and those long words is it?

I'm measuring need by the fact that one set of behaviour is a criminal offence and the other isn't. Surely even you would agree that the greatest need would be to tackle criminal behaviour?

This imagined silencing isn't preventing you from spouting your wisdom and those long words is it?

Attempted silencing. There's nothing imagined about it. At 1703, you said "What is there to debate anyway? It should be dismissed."

I'm measuring need by the fact that one set of behaviour is a criminal offence and the other isn't.

Quite. A principal, like I said. If I were a parent of a teenage girl (I'm not) I might disagree with you that I shouldn't counsel my daughter to be careful sending images and concentrate instead on attempting to educate the country's boys.

Everyone will have their own more hierarchy of needs and principles as they see fit. However as a society (and that is what scouse and the rest of us were talking about) the need to tackle men's/boy's harmful behaviour is greater than the need to tackle women's non harmful actions. That is why the law has been created. Constantly putting the onus on women to change rather than asking men to change is not getting to the root of the problem.

Although I realise that this issue largely concerns pictures of women, I would like to add to my previous post that, as "a woman of a certain age", I would advise my son to avoid having photos taken that he wouldn't want to be seen in public either. Similarly I would advise my daughter that life does not need to take place through the lens of a camera. (of course neither of them would take any notice of an old bat like me ....)

The debate is concentrating on women being the victims here but there is no reason why the same thing couldn't/ doesn't happen to boys/ men as well.

Of course distributing images taken in private to blackmail or cast someone in a derogatory light is wrong. But I also think that anyone should guard their privacy and think about what they are letting themselves in for - its not just about avoiding people with malicious intent - its just as easy for photos on a phone to be mistakenly forwarded to someone by accident.

As for the implications that this behaviour is immoral - that also wasn't my point. My feelings are that in all areas of our lives, taking photos has become so ubiquitous that its seems that people forget to simply enjoy the moment and the experience of their senses and emotions.

As Scallops says, we should educate people not to pressurize others into sending intimate photos. We should also educate them not to absurd trust by later putting those photos into the public domain. I also agree that we should have a specific law which criminalizes such activity.

So far so good.

However, as Scallops says, she thinks that that is the greater need and we should do no more. Doing more would detract from that greater need. It would 'revert' the attention back into women. In fact, says Scallops and VanHelsing, further discussion shouldn't even be allowed. It's victim-blaming. Full stop; they've decided; on yer bike sweetheart. I disagree.

I think it's sensible to encourage a message that intimate photos are not a necessary part of relationships; sensible to advise caution in how far you trust people and what you trust them with; sensible to attempt to mitigate vulnerability.

All this theorizing is all very well, but are people really saying they wouldn't address the subject with teenage daughters? I doubt it. I doubt very much that people would think' "well the onus is on the boys here, so we'll just wait until it happens and then call the police".

I never said we should do no more. I said we should focus on men's behaviour.

it's fine to tell your kids not to consent to images in the first place but that's not really the problem is it. when a girl becomes a certain age she becomes a thing for boys to play with. our whole rotten patriarchal society grooms children from an early age, both sexes are poorer because of it. We have to challenge misogyny wherever we see it and stop blaming victims for the crimes committed against them.

In a previous life I used to media train professionals. One of the cardinal rules media trainers give is "never say anything you would not be happy to see broadcast or in print".

The fact that a lot of media trained professionals still do it and then have to row back almost instantly with their reputation damaged underlines how sound this advice is.

In today's digital world where nothing can be assured of being private (think naked celeb photos) the advice of being cautious when it comes to intimate pix is a sensible one. It isn't even so much a case of not trusting your partner but one of knowing that you cannot guarantee your private life will stay private. It certainly isn't victim blaming to be aware that once you have a digital image of you in an intimate situation you have to some extent lost control over it.

So, yes I would advise a daughter (or son) not to go down that route, not just because even a once trusted partner can go rogue, but for the reason that you can never know where it may end up.

grimbletart That is quite brilliant as it is sound advice that does not single out either gender.

Thanks Dervel. TBH I am often scared of posting a view sometimes on FWR as so much is interpreted as victim blaming when it absolutely isn't meant that way.

Hmm. Struggling to see much of a difference between what Scouse and Grimbletart said. Perhaps that's the thing (with the internet); it isn't really what you say, it's perception of who's saying it.

Yes, Scouse's final sentence was slightly problematic, but that shouldn't have detracted from the general point she was attempting to convey. And yes, apparently I have a combative style . So people disagree with me because of my style? Haha

I think grimble's point does make it more neutral - it isn't then about whether you trust your partner, images of Matt Smith and Jennifer Lawrence have leaked owing to IT. Security being breached and that may be easier to broach with boys and girls in the throes of first relationships than "if he sends your photos out, it will be his fault but it will, unfairly, be you that will suffer"

Grimble maybe a better phrase than victim blaming might be shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. A fair few of the pictures and films were done before revenge porn became a 'thing' maybe? It would certainly pay to be a hell of a lot more circumspect about doing it now.