Revenge porn is a crime with many different faces that are amplified in the social media age. Victims can be pestered multiple times a day for explicit images, and then blamed for sharing them when they are exposed by former partners. But the stigma around revenge porn makes it more difficult to report these crimes to police.

In this podcast Shea Dawson, Juliette Sauvage and Frazer Ramsden speak to legal and social media experts, sexual assault support service workers, police and those affected first-hand by revenge porn to find out how common it is and what measures can be taken to protect people. One solution is media reporting more widely on the issue to raise awareness and reduce the stigma of this harmful crime.

Music: www.bensound.com

Revenge porn stigma exposes difficulties for victims – Transcript

Frazer: Hi, my name’s Frazer Ramsden and I’m joined by my co-hosts Juliette Sauvage and Shea Dawson.

Today we’re taking a deep dive into revenge porn – what is it, how common is it and what measures can we take to protect ourselves and our community from harm?

Juliette: Now a quick trigger warning, this podcast will be delving into some sensitive issues, including sexual assault and non-consensual pornography.  If you find any of this subject matter confronting, resources and helplines can be found at reachout.com.

Shea: According to the Sunshine Coast Criminal Investigation Branch officer-in-charge Daren Edwards, revenge porn as an offence has changed rapidly over the past few years.  He says that recent changes to legislation have allowed police to jump on offenders quicker and more effectively.

To find out more about how the legislation around revenge porn operates, I had a chat to Dr Kelley Burton.  Dr Burton is an associate professor in criminal law at the University of the Sunshine Coast.  As part of her work, she’s done research into sexual violence and how we can prevent it, both from a legal and non-legal perspective as part of U-S-C’s Sexual Violence Research and Prevention Unit.

Kelley: Revenge porn is an area of criminal law and it’s happening in relationships that typically break down and one person during the relationship when it was going really well has possibly shared some intimate or nude or personal images of themselves to their partner and after that relationship breaks down, the partner then distributes that image to a wider audience and they do without the permission of the person who’s actually in the image.

Because this type of image-based abuse is a minor criminal offence, it’s traditionally dealt with in a Magistrate’s Court or the lowest possible court in a jurisdiction.  And so the only way we can really find out about our revenge porn law cases is if the media picks up on those cases and reports them in their stories because the cases go unreported when they’re in the Magistrate’s Court.  It’s only if the cases go on to appeal – and they would go on to appeal to the District Court from the Magistrate’s Court – that we would see a case that’s actually reported, you know, a judgement to actually read.  So we’re relying really heavily on the media to report on revenge porn cases and the outcomes of those cases because if you’re not sitting in the courtroom at the time they’re being heard you don’t actually hear about them.

And it sort of sits at the fringes I guess of sexual violence because it is of a sexual nature but yet it’s not involving some sort of physical – I guess – physical penetration.  Like, there’s no penetration like rape or sexual assault so it’s sort of not as physical – it’s sort of a different type of abuse to our traditional types of sexual violence.

Shea: So it seems like what you’re saying Kelley is that there’s a real struggle to conduct research in this area and about this offence.  Would you say that’s the only barrier though?

Kelley: That’s really interesting.  So I think you know, the scholars in this field are saying that there’s not enough empirical research in revenge porn law.  So we do need to get out there and do more empirical research – so we need more quantitative data to find out how many cases there are in each of the jurisdictions in Australia and whether they are in fact increasing I guess from year to year.  But I think the barriers – there are some serious barriers in this field which are probably going to underreport the number of instances of revenge porn law and I think this comes back to the victims themselves.  They don’t feel like they can report revenge porn problems because of the stigma that’s attached to revenge porn. You know, they feel like they’re going to be criticised for having the image been made in the first place.…

So it sort of, you know, creates a bit of stigma and for that reason, the victims themselves are less likely to report it and you know, that underreporting, I’m sure that will continue unfortunately in this space and we’ll always be wondering whether we’re capturing effectively through the law all instances of revenge porn – I don’t know that we can ever do that.  I think the rate of revenge porn will be higher than whatever we find empirically, so we do need to do more empirical research in this space to find out how effective the laws really are, but I would think that a plausible argument would be that if they’re starting to increase the maximum penalties for this offence and they’re starting to reform some of the laws in this area and the other jurisdictions have certainly come on board – except for Tasmania – in terms of implementing the legislation, that means that this is a serious problem and it’s escalating and it’s becoming more prevalent and we do need to deal with it.

Shea: So guys, it seems like our legal system isn’t really taking this offence too seriously.

Juliette: Right, and that’s creating this sort of social stigma which makes victims hesitant to come forward and even when they do, we don’t see it reported very often.  This creates a sort of vicious cycle where victims feel they won’t be heard even if they do speak out.

Shea: In fact, in the early stages of planning this podcast, I actually reached out to a friend of mine from high school who had her nudes leaked back in school.  Unfortunately, she was too embarrassed to tell her story and I think this really exemplifies the culture we have of victim-blaming when it comes to revenge porn.

Frazer: Two people that can help us to discuss this issue are Kerinda Camilleri and Dianne Proctor. They’re team leaders at Laurel Place, an assault counselling charity, who communicate with victims every day and are very attuned to their struggles. I sat down with them to find out if victim-blaming was an issue with individuals, or with society as a whole.

What are some things that we can do as a society to help revenge porn victims, both for adults and children?

Dianne: One of the things as a society we could look at is to stop victim-blaming, and if we’re talking about gender and we’re talking and if we’re talking about an image of a female then there’s a lot of victim-blaming of why she did that in the first place, without putting it into the context of what has become a normal part of young people’s ways of communicating, but you don’t hear the same questions about the person who shared the image, you’ll often find the focus is on the victim and what she has done wrong. So I think if we look at the way we respond and look at it as a bigger issue that belongs to generational influences rather than blaming the individual. Usually, someone doesn’t post a nude without being asked to post a nude, so we have to look at why is the asking happening, not just why is the image being taken, but why is it important to the others who are asking. So, I think there’s two things going on here – parallel processes – but one is in the spotlight and one is not.

Kerinda: I agree entirely, and I think that young victims we speak to talk about how they’re harassed and hounded constantly and peer-group pressure and a whole range of things as to why they may be asked to share the images. They don’t necessarily want to but it’s about a sense of fitting. They’ll get requested for nudes 10 times a day – how do you deal with that? If you’re struggling anyway and don’t have a lot of confidence, you feel this is the only way this will stop – you share that image and then it’s out of your control.

Frazer: Is there any suggestions you would make for people that have friends or family members that are victims of revenge porn crime?

Dianne: One of the biggest/easiest things to do is not judge, and to really support a young victim without judgement and be that support person they can talk to about how they’re feeling.

Usually, the images have gone, and there’s not much anyone can do to get them back but certainly reinforcing that this is a crime – this is not something you did wrong. And I think it’s just about putting it into a frame of non-blaming.

Frazer: You’ve spoken about what can be done at an individual level, to help victims of revenge porn. What can be done at a higher level, through Government?

Dianne: It has to be lead from the top as well as the bottom. families are a big resource on educating about relationships and respect. I see it as a two-pronged approach. I think Governments leading those Australia wide campaigns that are on social media and television, really promoting this message of gender diversity really helps to feed.

Kerinda: It becomes more of a natural conversation then because media has such a strong influence – using those platforms – because then becomes quite normalised. You don’t second guess it then. Because you see how much Instagram and all those platforms have such an impact on young people to young people. You could pump out the same message all the time which could shift the thinking

Dianne: I think you only have to look at the change in awareness of DV now which was one of those rally taboo subjects not too long ago. We’ve had a few campaigns on our media, mainstream media around ‘this is DV, DV is not okay, we don’t want DV in Australia,’ so that’s been very helpful in opening conversations, and If we can open up conversations, we can create change.

Frazer: As we just heard from Dianne and Kerinda, there is true merit to having these conversations for the people affected by revenge porn, both directly and indirectly.  And what a great time to start these conversations, when instant mass-communication technology is right at our fingertips!  We should actively be using social media to reach out to those affected by revenge porn and spread awareness to those who haven’t.

Juliette: To get more of an insight into social media and the role it plays in revenge porn, I spoke to Dr Karen Sutherland. Dr Sutherland is a social media expert and lecturer at U-S-C. Thank you for joining us today Karen.

What do you think we should be doing with young people to make them more aware of the risks and how they need to be a bit more safe on social media?

Karen: We need to educate them, and explain to them what can happen but not by adults saying ‘don’t do this and don’t do that’. We need to get people who it’s actually happened to, who are around their age, to actually share what happened to them, you know so they’re actually hearing stories from people like them, rather than…because I mean we all knew when we were younger if an adult’s like telling us not to do something, or your parents are saying ‘don’t do this’ and they’d come up with this sort of really unlikely scenario of the worst case scenario, you just don’t listen. So we need to hear stories from people they can really relate to and connect with, and identify with about what can happen when it does go wrong.

Juliette: So you’re talking about just really getting on their level to educate them. What do you think that would look like?

Karen: Absolutely, yeah. I mean we’ve done it with other types of media and we do it at high school, just looking at how television isn’t real and the way news is constructed and we need to do the same with social media. And we also need to teach everyone really, kids or anyone who is using it, just how to use it in a more mindful way, so actually using it with a purpose and not just sitting on there as a way to be distracted or pass the time or just for entertainment. Actually just having a point to it, rather than just sitting on it with…just glued to it, scrolling the whole time…it’s sort of looking at social media in, you know there is a darker side and there’s also a very positive side so it’s learning how to navigate the darker side towards the positive side. So that’s what I think we really need to focus on.

Juliette: Alright, so let’s say for a moment that we’ve reached a worst case scenario, and sensitive images of ourselves have been leaked. What would be the best first step?

Karen: Well, you’d go to the police. Some women find it hard to, at times, for the police to take it all very seriously, but there are laws now where you are protected so even if someone shared a post or showed someone else something that you had not given them consent to show, of that nature, then that’s actually breaking the law now.

Juliette: But it’s not just a legal issue, is it? It’s bigger than that. What part do you think social media platforms play in the issue of revenge porn? Do you think they need to be monitoring it more carefully?

Karen: Oh absolutely they should be. But what I think, I just don’t think they have the capabilities to be able to do it. They believe they’re on top of it but they’re not. Like, they do have community standards and guidelines, but they can sometimes be very, I guess it’s very subjective about what they think is actually breaches those. Like sometimes people are allowed to say whatever they want but then other people are cracked down over something that’s relatively minor. So it’s really hard to know just how stringent they are.

Juliette: Let’s talk about victim blaming, because there is this huge stigma in cases like revenge porn where the emphasis is on the victim instead of on the offender.

Karen: Yeah, I mean, there is victim blaming and the thing is it’s not the victim’s fault at all…and like a lot of the time, like the culture the way it is now, and I don’t want to generalise but now with things like Tinder and things like that, it’s become I guess more, sort of, common for people to share images of that nature, or even to be asked to share images of that nature. And so it’s not the person’s fault who did it, they did not give consent to that person to share it. Of course, in hindsight it wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t, but it, that doesn’t matter, they didn’t do the wrong thing. It was the person who shared it without consent who did the wrong thing – they’re the one who’s actually breaking the law.

So with that in mind guys, let’s talk solutions.

Shea: We as the media are in such a unique position of power to help when it comes to the issue of revenge porn.  As Kelley touched on, because these cases go before the Magistrate’s Court, it’s very rare that we get to see them reported in judgements.  This means that it’s often up to court reporters and journalists in general to determine what our audience – the general public – get to see.  So it’s important that we work towards breaking down the stigma and stop victim blaming.  Rather than asking “why did this person send an explicit image,” we should instead be asking “why did this other person leak or share the image without consent?”

Frazer: Kerinda and Dianne were very vocal on the point of victim blaming. Attitudes that lead to this type of mentality start in our households with our children, and parents should be stepping in to provide moral education on correct ways to treat the opposite sex. If parents are failing to provide this support, they should seek it; Paid professionals, school guidance counsellors and charity networks like Laurel Place are available in our communities. Adult and child victims shouldn’t hesitate to look for help as well. Mental health is valuable and there’s nothing wrong with needing support.

Juliette: Karen brought up one of the best ways to tackle the issue of revenge porn, which is to educate young people on how to use social media safely and productively. And like you were saying Frazer, this is something that we can start doing at a very young age. It’s important to remember that if used correctly social media can be a force for good and a powerful communication tool. So it’s not as simple as ‘don’t send explicit images’ or ‘don’t go on social media’.

Shea: Hopefully this podcast has opened up the conversation about revenge porn. Obviously we don’t have any one magic solution but the best way to challenge a stigma is to have these hard conversations even if they do make us feel uncomfortable. Have open discussions with friends and families about these issues, and if you know anybody that’s been a victim of revenge porn or sexual assault, make sure they know they’re not alone.

Juliette: If any of the topics we’ve raised today have brought up concerns for you, please don’t hesitate to contact support networks like reachout.com or 1800 RESPECT.