A near-decade long campaign by Maria Miller MP is set to result in new laws that will protect victims of intimate image abuse and ensure perpetrators are punished commensurate to the chilling harm they cause.
Maria said, ‘intimate image abuse destroys lives and, as a result of these changes to the Online Safety Bill, will become a sex crime which recognises the real damage done to victims. Posting intimate images online without consent is a gross demonstration of control and subjugation, a tool of abusers to strip their victims of any remaining sense of autonomy, and a violation of trust.
‘This Government has done more than any other to put new laws in place to protect victims of this type of online abuse. The new offence of sharing for sexual gratification will mean anyone prosecuted could face the prospect of being put on the sex offender register. I hope that will stop many people who at the moment think there are no consequences for their actions.
‘These new laws are closely based on the extensive work done by the Law Commission's Report published last year and I pay tribute to their tenacity and expertise.
‘The Government has not only heard my concerns, and those of countless others both now and when I first began fighting for this. The Government have listened to women and are acting to protect them.
‘Posting intimate images online without consent is an appalling act of sexual abuse and the changes in the law now being brought forward by the Government are directly linked to one of my constituents making me aware of her concern in 2014. I have been determined to see a law change ever since.’
The Government has laid amendments in the Lords, reflecting those tabled by Maria in November 2022, meaning four new offences will become part of law.
These will be:
- A base offence that criminalises sharing an intimate image without someone’s consent.
- A more serious offence of sharing an image with intent to cause alarm, humiliation or distress.
- Another more serious offence of sharing for sexual gratification.
- An additional offence of threatening to share an image, whether or not the image actually exists or whether it is shared in the end or not.
Maria’s amendments differ from the current ‘revenge porn law’ by removing the requirement to prove intent, replacing this with the base offence which hinges only on the consent of the person in the image. Without that consent, the sharing will be illegal. This brings intimate image abuse law in line with the majority of other sexual offences.
Crucially, these new laws will also cover deepfakes – images made to look as though they are of someone specific even though they are computer generated. The majority of deepfaked images are pornographic, meaning no one is safe from intimate image abuse anymore; images don’t even need to exist for them to be convincingly created. The new laws do this by including manufactured or manipulated images in the definition of a relevant image.
Incidences of intimate image abuse are increasing greatly. The Revenge Porn Helpline found that cases increased by over 40% between 2020 and 2021, rising from 3,146 cases to 4,406, and female victims, not only representing 75% of cases, suffer on average 60 times more content of them released than do male victims.
The pandemic had a severe impact on the amount of abuse, with reports to the Revenge Porn Helpline increasing by 87% between 2019 and 2020. Reports continue to rise, and the impact on victims is devastating.
Maria’s amendments will make it easier to prosecute abusers, and provide anonymity and special measures in court to victims of this crime – giving them the confidence to come forward.
- Find the amendments laid by the Government here: https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/51899/documents/3702
- Government press release: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-crackdown-on-image-based-abuse?deliveryName=DM25516