Revenge porn offenders to be charged with domestic abuse-UK

Link to article

Some excerpts from the article:

"Under the new guidelines, police and prosecutors should take a broader view of what constitutes abuse than a man being violent towards his wife or girlfriend in the home, and should be more open-minded on who victims may be."

"The change is likely to see more women charged with offences against their husbands and boyfriends, and abusive partners in gay and lesbian relationships will also be targeted."

"Children who abuse their elderly parents and even teenage gang members who bully others could be prosecuted."

"The much broader definitions around domestic abuse are intended to reflect modern society and improve low conviction rates."

"Campaigners have long argued that domestic abuse is often a hidden crime. Among cases already uncovered are those in which elderly victims have had medication strictly controlled or even withheld."

"Other cases have included victims convinced by a domineering partner that they had mental health problems. In other situations, victims were forced to dress in a certain way or surrender control of their financial freedom."

"Male victims often found their children were used against them, with their abusive female partner restricting or withholding access as a form of control."

What are your thoughts on this? Personally its not that I'm for domestic abuse in any of its forms, I think its vile and wicked. But the point being is that there's only so much you can enforce through means of jurisprudence. To me this new legislation sounds like legally enforced morality and decency which kind of defeats the purpose of these. At best, this will amount to symptomatic treatment of social and moral maladies that won't be going away following such a course of action. In fact, it will simply bottle up society's depravity until it explodes and goes out of control.

Also, this sounds like a recipe for more political correctness and delicacy, not to mention how ball-breaking it sounds...

Yeah I am not sure about this. Sounds like it is just opening a huge can of worms that can't be reasonably dealt with.

It just seems this opens a massive door to allow a flood of he said/she said type cases. Rape constantly proves to be too much for the judicial system to properly handle and there is physical evidence that can be collected in those cases. These cases look to be WORSE as there might not even be physical evidence to gather...

Hopefully one day we can figure out how to handle this shit properly. The he said she said crap just doesn't go well in our judicial system...

I say that all first world countries enforce morality and decency. Otherwise, their economies would be less prosperous due to the international community condemning them to isolated markets. However, differences between countries come from the foundations of their respective laws. Imperfect, yes, but the effort towards moving forward socially is commendable.There are those who believe they are sorely inadequate because these countries govern with declarations of rightness and wrongness, yet they would prefer varying sort of irreverence by which they base their claims on some system they find acceptable or right.

Right click and save ass(sic).

What enters the internet, never leaves it.

I could see where they're coming from. Person sends nude pictures to his/her significant other, they have a bad break up, and their ex posts the pictures on the Internet. Assuming it turns into an he-said/she-said situation I could see lawmakers requiring people to sign releases to have their amateur stuff uploaded, which would slow down the flow of non-professional stuff.

It should definite be illegal to upload nude photos of people without their permission. It's a malicious act with permanent consequences.

Perhaps these legal changes are being introduced...because they're the simplest way of dealing with these cases?

I mean, there are probably huge issues when raising privacy law arguments against these acts, since they're often taken voluntarily and presumably under an assumption that they could end up online...so domestic abuse seems to fit more neatly, and treats these situations more seriously. Hm. Anyway, works in my mind.

I don't know about the rest of the article but revenge porn should be charged with no less than life.

Simply because you're hurting the person for life as well and the hurt inflicted is not small.

The internet doesn't exist very long and as of now, in some countries, there are hardly any regulations. Some countries do have privacy laws that once broken this severly won't make you go to jail for long but you'll pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, meaning you'll be working for the rest of your days for your crimes. These are mostly european countries.

I hope other countries follow, otherwise it's just the wild west.

It's morally wrong, and I don't think it should be allowed.

Some of the excerpts I have no problem being defined as domestic abuse.

True.....

No one in their right mind is gonna disagree that revenge porn should be illegal. The issue I think a lot of people overlook with it is how ridiculous it is going to be to actually enforce it. These cases are going to be nothing more than he-said she-said contests and that is just a mess in the courtroom.

It also leaves open the possibility of someone agreeing to such a thing at one point in a relationship and agreeing to post it, but then what happens if a break-up occurs and suddenly one party is claiming they are being violated and never wanted it up? Unless one person on either side can pull up some sort of evidence in writing or a taped conversation you are just going to be left with a back and forth case of two people pointing the fingers at eachother and calling the other a liar and that is just a mess of a courtroom.

It could be treated similarly to other cases of invasion of privacy, and prosecute similarly.

All of these problems apply to numerous other crimes, but somehow modern justice systems are capable of achieving very low false conviction rates. It simply means we will need to invest more resources, which has never been a strong argument against outlawing clearly harmful behavior.

As for your scenario, it is unlikely that the case will go to court if there is not enough evidence for a conviction. We can simply adopt business law style requirements, where there must be strong evidence of verbal agreements having taken place, or else a signed legal document must be presented - else there is a presumption that no consent was given. As the vast, vast majority of women would probably not agree to having nudes of themselves uploaded, these conditions seem like a reasonable place to start.

If people don't give consent for their videos/pictures to be posted online, you can be damn sure that's illegal.

I'm not sure why people think taking nude photos or videos of themselves with their phones is "safe". Anything connected to the internet can be hacked. As the Fappening has taught us. Just don't do it.

Hmmm.... well thats fine.

I would take a domestic assault charge over being labeled a registered sex offender for life like they do over here.

A domestic assault charge is way lesser than going to prison as a sex offender and having that label for ever.

All of these things are excellent to hear. A lot people have outdated views on what constitutes abuse meaning a lot of victims cannot seek help, or the resources to help them don't exist in the first place. I was a bit cautious after reading the title so I was pleased to see these quotes as I opened the thread.

As far as "revenge porn" goes, I agree it's a rotten thing to do to someone. On the one hand I think the wider public should be more open minded about people sending explicit pictures to their partners such that having them leaked doesn't cause damage in the first place, but there's no excuse for vindictive exes leaking them. However the crime sounds like one with a lot of nuances that might make it very difficult to successfully prosecute someone or make it too easy for innocents to be punished.

For example, in order to successfully prosecute someone for releasing their ex-partner's private photos on the internet, you'd have to prove that it was actually them who released them. Of course the original recipient would be the prime suspect but it doesn't rule out the possibility of others taking them from either person's phone (eg if someone sent their phone in for repairs and a dodgy employee snooped around the phone's memory and copied them). It also doesn't rule out the possibility that the person who sent them (who would obviously have retained copies of the photos) deliberately put their own nudes online and blamed it on their ex to get them in trouble. Abusive relationships can lead to messy break ups and I don't think it's far out of the question that an abusive partner could frame their ex in this way.