Victims left suicidal by sharing of intimate material online

Women’s Aid reports concerns

Sometimes the images are shared on the Dark Web without victims' consent, Women's Aid said

Catherine Fegan

January 11 2022 02:30 AM

The worrying trend of intimate image abuse is leading to some victims contemplating suicide, according to Women’s Aid.

Image-based abuse happens when an intimate image or video is shared without the consent of the person pictured. This includes images or videos that have been digitally altered.

Sarah Benson, the chief executive of Women’s Aid, said her organisation has, for some time, been concerned about the impact of online image-based abuse on young women.

She also expressed concern about abusers who use technology to stalk and harass.

“At the click of a finger, a woman can feel like her life has been destroyed,” Ms Benson told the Irish Independent.

“It’s a very worrying trend. Women have reported being suicidal after these images are released because they can go viral and once it’s out in the world (on) the internet, it’s there and at the moment, we don’t have robust legislation, we don’t have robust civil remedies for that kind of thing – so sometimes you are reliant on contacting multiple platforms to try and get them to help.

"Sometimes material is put up on dark sites, women have ads put up about them and a lot of those sites operate outside the jurisdiction and don’t really care where they are bound by legislation.”

The Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Bill 2017, which was signed into law in December 2020 – covers a wide range of offences, including online abuse, cyber-bullying and image-based abuse.

Two offences dealing with the non-consensual distribution of intimate images are contained in the legislation.

The first makes it an offence to distribute, publish or to threaten to distribute intimate images without consent, and with intent to cause harm to the victim.

Another deals with the taking, distribution or publication of intimate images without a person’s consent.

“The new legislation hasn’t really been tested yet and that’s something we hope will provide some kind of sanction for that kind of behaviour,” said Ms Benson.

“What we find is that with much domestic abuse behaviour, it’s that women don’t want to be dragged through a court process that can be lengthy, protracted, painful, re-traumatising and incredibly slow. They just want the abuse to stop.”

Reflecting on last year, Ms Benson said that while 2020 was the busiest year ever in terms of demand for Women’s Aid services, 2021 saw this pattern continue.

“Coming into 2021 we were wondering if it was going to ease off a little bit,” she said.

“But the fact is it didn’t. Our frontline, face-to-face services have been absolutely out the door with demand, and we know from our colleagues all around the country that demand for support with really acute distress, with court support and accompaniment and then in really acute situations, demand for refuge has just been extremely high all year.”

For a number of years, domestic abuse advocates have been calling for Ireland to follow the US and UK’s lead and implement domestic homicide reviews to help prevent future fatal incidents.

The Department of Justice commissioned a study into these reviews, which is expected to be published later this year. “That will hopefully give some recommendations on how we can look at the practice in other jurisdictions of doing properly co-ordinated reviews of domestic homicides where the objective is not to find blame but really to dig in to find learning,” Ms Benson explained.