The Newest Type of Digital Abuse; Meet Revenge Porn

By Charlotte White

Digital abuse is growing by the second in the United States with more and more people finding ways to manipulate and harm people via the internet with women and children being the disproportionate majority of digital abuse victims. A new exploitative process increasing in popularity is the nonconsensual sharing of erotic content or known casually as revenge porn.  Revenge porn defined simply as a type of digital abuse in which nude or sexually explicit photos or videos are shared without the consent of those pictured…A current or previous partner may share such images as “revenge” or threaten not distribute them as a type of blackmail and it’s estimated that an alarming 10.2 million women above the age of 15 in America have reported having sexually explicit images or videos of them leaked and posted online with these numbers expecting an unfortunate rise in the future.

One of the most concerning aspects of this revenge porn movement is its’ popularity among adolescents. It’s reported that approximately 1 in 3 underage teens have seen nonconseually shared nudes of other minors, which is legally considered child pornography. However most porn sites do not verify age or consent, making it incredibly easy for anyone to post anything including image-based sexual abuse with virtually no consequences.

The effects of revenge porn on its’ victims are often chronic and long-term specifically on their mental health. According to a study conducted by the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, 80 percent of respondents experienced severe emotional distress and anxiety due to revenge porn. In one instance, a woman’s ex-partner posted sexually explicit photos of her on a revenge porn website with an attached message saying she was seeking rough sex. When one of the site’s users responded to the post, the ex-partner provided him with the woman’s address, the user then went to her house and brutally raped her, later pleading that he’d thought she wanted to be abused. Unable to cope with the humiliation and shame tied to what she had experienced she eventually committed suicide. One victim of revenge porn shares, “The videos of me being on Pornhub has affected my life to the point I don’t leave my house anymore. I stopped being able to work just because I was too scared to be out in public around other people. And I feel like everyone who looks at me has looked at those videos.”

The presented statistics only anticipate to represent a portion of the people affected by revenge porn as many of these cases go completely unreported because of societal stigmas shaming young women who choose to come forward seeking help or justice. Even for the small percentage of those who bravely choose to speak out about their abuse are met with countless legal hurdles to receiving any kind of repercussion as there are no federal laws criminalizing revenge porn or requiring users to have any kind of legal responsibility for pictures or videos they’ve posted unless it breaks existing copyright laws. State laws that are in place to prohibit digital sexual abuse are usually broad in scope and vary in effectiveness, with many perpetrators facing minimal punishment if any. In order to protect millions of people from the spread of revenge porn, we must call abusive behavior into question and bring offenders to justice but most importantly, get rid of the shame, humiliation, and stigma attached to victims of abuse.