Aug 9, 2018 05:09 PM
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/4...f292ae905b
EXCERPT: "My life is ruined if he puts these pictures online." These words were being cried down the phone to my colleague. The woman she was speaking to was hysterical. She had just found out that her boyfriend was threatening to put her nude pictures online. What if her family found the photos? Or her colleagues stumbled across them? The threat had left her feeling suicidal.
I founded the Revenge Porn helpline in 2015. It's a government-funded service that helps people who might be the victims of what we call "image-based sexual abuse". It's not so catchy for a helpline, but that’s what it is when someone distributes intimate photos or videos of you without your consent. In 2015 it became a crime in England and Wales, with a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment.
Revenge porn is nothing new; the first calls we received were mainly historic cases. One woman had an ex-partner who kept uploading nude photos and videos of her to blogs, social media, and websites. She had been trying to get them taken down for seven years to no avail. She’d even been to the police, but they hadn’t known how to respond. She was in utter despair.
Today, a lot of the cases we deal with involve an ex-partner. There are two main types: one is where it’s an abusive relationship, perhaps a horrible break-up, and the partner really wants to get at their ex. In those cases, they are often threatening to send intimate photos or videos to their family or their work. The other type is when the partner wants to shame them as publicly as possible by putting compromising photos on porn sites.
When people come to us about content posted online, the first thing we do is try to take it down. We can’t guarantee anything, as there are some websites that are difficult to work with and some that just ignore us completely.
In our first year, the helpline took 3,000 calls. Here we are three years later at over 12,000 total calls and emails. I wouldn’t like to say that there has been a rise in revenge porn, it’s more that there has been a rise in people becoming aware of how to get help....
MORE: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/4...f292ae905b
EXCERPT: "My life is ruined if he puts these pictures online." These words were being cried down the phone to my colleague. The woman she was speaking to was hysterical. She had just found out that her boyfriend was threatening to put her nude pictures online. What if her family found the photos? Or her colleagues stumbled across them? The threat had left her feeling suicidal.
I founded the Revenge Porn helpline in 2015. It's a government-funded service that helps people who might be the victims of what we call "image-based sexual abuse". It's not so catchy for a helpline, but that’s what it is when someone distributes intimate photos or videos of you without your consent. In 2015 it became a crime in England and Wales, with a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment.
Revenge porn is nothing new; the first calls we received were mainly historic cases. One woman had an ex-partner who kept uploading nude photos and videos of her to blogs, social media, and websites. She had been trying to get them taken down for seven years to no avail. She’d even been to the police, but they hadn’t known how to respond. She was in utter despair.
Today, a lot of the cases we deal with involve an ex-partner. There are two main types: one is where it’s an abusive relationship, perhaps a horrible break-up, and the partner really wants to get at their ex. In those cases, they are often threatening to send intimate photos or videos to their family or their work. The other type is when the partner wants to shame them as publicly as possible by putting compromising photos on porn sites.
When people come to us about content posted online, the first thing we do is try to take it down. We can’t guarantee anything, as there are some websites that are difficult to work with and some that just ignore us completely.
In our first year, the helpline took 3,000 calls. Here we are three years later at over 12,000 total calls and emails. I wouldn’t like to say that there has been a rise in revenge porn, it’s more that there has been a rise in people becoming aware of how to get help....
MORE: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/4...f292ae905b