What To Do if You’re a Victim of Revenge Porn

This article is originally from VICE New Zealand

It’s said best by a 17-year-old Rue in HBO’s Euphoria: in today's world “nudes are the currency of love.” I take them, your mates take them, your dad probably takes them now he has his own ipad mini. Save yourself some trauma and teach him how to disconnect from the family cloud before you see his unkempt balls. 

Even though taking/posting/sending nudes is common, many of us will have dealt with a lifetime of fear-mongering regarding our behaviour online – from “stranger danger” school programmes to lectures from parents about whether you’d “want your grandparents to see the picture you just put on Instagram”. But this attitude is dying along with them. 

Just like tattoos, where warnings about how they’d look when we became sagging octogenarians did little to discourage the masses, many of us have accepted that what we put online is there for good. We’re not stupid. We know. And we’re okay with our grandad potentially being able to see our tits on instagram, because we no longer hold tits to the same salacious Victorian ankle standards that people did previously. 

Social media has encouraged us to capture and share ourselves constantly. Cameras frame our lives even in the most intimate situations. You feel hot, you take a picture — that’s how it goes for a lot of people. There are plenty of positives, but this generational shift has led to a distinct rise of these nudes and explicit images becoming just another part of our digital identities…

And a rise in the sending of consensual sexy stuff unfortunately means a rise in the non-consensual sharing of the same sexy stuff. And that stops it from being sexy. Aside from just being a sick thing to do, it also makes it very, very illegal. 

Revenge porn (a term that’s increasingly being replaced with image based abuse) refers to the distribution of sexually explicit images and videos of someone without their consent. The switch from a saucy pic to legitimate revenge porn happens as soon as you share that image or video without the sober – and ongoing – consent of the person in it, even if the picture was taken or initially sent by the person themselves.

Sharing revenge porn can be as insidious as it sounds — shared intentionally to hurt the person in the pictures. A nasty break-up revenge plot that hopes to humiliate and exploit the most intimate moments you’d once shared. Sometimes, people will upload videos to sites like PornHub, or post them to Facebook or Instagram to be seen by people in their own community. 

It doesn’t always happen this blatantly, though. Sharing a nude with the boys or your girlfriends for shock value, or to show off, isn’t that uncommon. But the same rules apply. It's all image based abuse under the law. 

With communicating virtually being the norm for younger people, it’s somewhat unsurprising that people under the age of 19 have made up a third of the offenders dealt with by NZ Police since 2017. In 2021 alone, 1400 cases of image based abuse were reported by victims in Aotearoa.

It's hard to know what to do when the situation isn’t so cut and dry. A picture may have been sent without spite by a current partner to one of their friends, which is still technically illegal, but is a far cry from uploading an explicit video on PornHub. 

Sometimes, the people involved are partners, mates, exes you still care for. Even as a victim you can feel a responsibility to protect people who’ve done you wrong from the legal ramifications. It’s really important to weigh up these factors when reporting image based abuse, as it’s an emotional process as well as a practical one.   

On the flip side, there's also the temptation to take matters into your own hands when you’re angry and want to hurt someone as much as they’ve hurt you. Our emotions can be volatile in the wake of break-ups and situationships and we don’t always think rationally. But an eye for an eye isn’t worth it in a situation where prison time is a legitimate possibility – so don’t retaliate by posting intimate images of the person who posted them of you. Following the most professional route is the best way to settle such a complicated and potentially dangerous situation. 

THE LAW IN AOTEAROA 

In Aotearoa, image based abuse is taken very seriously, especially since changes to the law surrounding digital communications in 2022.

• Perpetrators can be fined up to $50,000 and face two years in prison for sharing the explicit consent without consent. 

• Intent to harm is no longer necessary to prosecute.

• People under 16 can’t give consent for explicit images/videos of them to be shared.

POLICE

Contact the Police. You can help out the process by screenshotting the content and full URL to provide to the police, but they’ll be able to help gather any evidence needed to prosecute. 

NETSAFE 

If you’re not ready to go to the police, but are dealing with an intimate video having been uploaded on a porn site, you can contact Netsafe here to get help in having it removed.

REPORT ON SOCIALS 

You can also go directly to the platform the content has been posted and report the image/video. Facebook, Instagram, they all have simple post-reporting mechanisms and this will mean the content is reviewed internally and likely removed ASAP for explicit nature. You should also report the person who shared it — but screenshot first, so if you decide to go to the police later you have evidence of who was involved. 

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Rachel Barker is a writer / producer at VICE NZ in Aotearoa.