{"id":140971,"date":"2018-06-14T06:25:04","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T06:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/revenge-porn-one-in-three-allegations-dropped\/"},"modified":"2018-06-14T06:25:04","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T06:25:04","slug":"revenge-porn-one-in-three-allegations-dropped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/revenge-porn-one-in-three-allegations-dropped\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenge porn: One in three allegations dropped"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p069zwc1.jpg\"\/>Media playback is unsupported on your device<figcaption>Media captionRevenge porn victim: &#039;I felt like I had been raped&#039;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">One in three allegations of so-called revenge porn are withdrawn by the complainant, new figures show.<\/p>\n<p>Since it was made a criminal offence in 2015 victims have chosen not to support charges in 2,813 of 7,806 incidents.<\/p>\n<p>Some alleged victims say it is because they are not granted anonymity, while others cite a lack of police support.<\/p>\n<p>The Ministry of Justice said it was committed to supporting victims but had no current plan to change the law around identification.<\/p>\n<p>The North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, Julia Mulligan, has launched a petition to change the law to grant victims anonymity, as is the case for complainants in sexual offence cases.<\/p>\n<p>To date it has received more than 15,000 signatures. <\/p>\n<p>She said: &quot;We think the law is fundamentally flawed. At the moment [revenge porn] is a communications offence not a sexual offence and that means victims face the likelihood of being publically named and we think that puts people off.&quot;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Humans to vet Facebook revenge porn photos<\/li>\n<li>Revenge porn almost killed me<\/li>\n<li>Facebook &#039;remembers&#039; nude images to combat revenge porn<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The BBC obtained figures relating to revenge porn complaints from 34 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales.<\/p>\n<p>Revenge porn is described as &quot;the sharing of private, sexual materials, either photos or videos, of another person without their consent and with the purpose of causing embarrassment or distress&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>The offence covers photos or videos showing people engaged in sexual activity which would not usually take place in public.<\/p>\n<p>It includes sharing the material as well as posting it online.<\/p>\n<p>In England and Wales, the maximum punishment is two years in prison - in Scotland, it is five years.<\/p>\n<h2>&#039;I thought it was just us having fun&#039; <\/h2>\n<figure>                                                                                                       Image copyright                  Getty Images                                                    <\/figure>\n<p>Lydia (whose name has been changed), from West Yorkshire, was with her partner for a year before they split up and he took it badly. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;I didn&#039;t know he was taking pictures. I was blindfolded and I didn&#039;t know he was taking videos of me. I thought it was just us having fun.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;After I split up with him I got this email from a woman I didn&#039;t know saying there were explicit photos of me on a website. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;I looked on the site and typed in my name and saw my pictures - I couldn&#039;t believe it - I freaked out, had a complete meltdown. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;I&#039;m a really private person - it was so upsetting. I called the police and I tried to contact different websites to get them to remove my pictures and video.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;He got sentenced to six months in prison. It didn&#039;t feel long enough for what he put me through.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I feel like I was molested - like I was raped.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Lauren Evans, from Hertfordshire, contacted Thames Valley Police in 2015 after she discovered sexual images of her were being shared via social media by a man she had met online.<\/p>\n<p>She said, however, she was made to feel that she was responsible for what had happened.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I felt like it was all my fault,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Even the police officer I told my story to said &#039;I guess you&#039;ve learnt your lesson now then&#039;, and that shook me to my core. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;I thought if the police think it&#039;s my fault then what is the point in going on.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>&#039;Victim blaming&#039;<\/h2>\n<p>She also said the term &quot;revenge porn&quot; should be changed as it &quot;makes it sound like the victim is deserving of this&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police said it could not comment on individual cases but that takes allegations of revenge porn &quot;extremely seriously&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Catherine Knibbs is a cyber trauma researcher and psychotherapist and said some people will never get over the trauma of being a victim of revenge porn.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Prosecutions are long, lengthy distressing process for most victims of any kind of crimes,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;In terms of sexual crimes - you&#039;re looking at the proposition you might be told it&#039;s your fault, you asked for it - lot of victim blaming, very difficult for victims to come to terms with.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Data collated by the BBC shows there has been an increase in the number of revenge porn cases reported to police since records began, from 1,861 offences in 2015-16 to 3,307 in 2017-18. <\/p>\n<p>The proportion of cases resulting in charges, however, has fallen. In 2015-16 it stood at 14% and in 2017-18 was just 7%. <\/p>\n<p>Vanessa Smith, Det Ch Insp of the West Yorkshire Cyber Crime Unit, said: &quot;Revenge porn itself is extortion, blackmail, it can be sexual harassment or stalking. I would urge people to be trustful of the police - we will treat your call with sensitivity.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We need to know basics - how it&#039;s been posted, to which sites - and then we can work with those sites and organisations. I know Facebook and Twitter have provided more guidance to their customers and have been quite robust monitoring it.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: &quot;Revenge porn is an awful abuse of trust which leaves victims feeling humiliated and degraded. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;By making it a specific offence we sent a clear message that it will not be tolerated, and there have now been almost 300 convictions. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;We are committed to supporting and protecting victims. We have no current plans to extend automatic anonymity to victims of the offence, but we keep the law under constant review.&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Media playback is unsupported on your deviceMedia captionRevenge porn victim: &#039;I felt like I had been raped&#039; One in three allegations of so-called revenge porn are withdrawn by the complainant,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":140972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}