Scenario: You’ve met your dream girl on a dating site. You start out chatting and exchange a few WhatsApp messages before asking to meet up and go on a date.
Things progress and the relationship becomes intimate. While in the throws of the “honeymoon stage”, a few provocative pictures are exchanged via WhatsApp. After a while, you realise the person may not be the one for you and you break off the relationship.
You then discover the pictures you exchanged have found their way onto the world wide web.
A worrying trend has been spreading worldwide that cause’s massive psychological and emotional trauma to its victims – revenge porn.
Revenge porn involves the distribution of sexually explicit images or videos, without the consent of the individuals depicted in said images or videos.
It has become so common that it has been defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as: “sexually explicit images of a person posted online without that person’s consent, especially as a form of revenge or harassment”.
This image-based sexual abuse is usually done by jilted ex-partners in an attempt to psychologically and emotionally hurt the victim and/or to cause reputational harm to the victim.
Revenge porn not only affects the victim emotionally but may cause the victim to be socially shunned or even ruin their professional life and cause financial woes.
In an attempt to address this issue, the South African government has drafted two new bills, the Films and Publications Amendment Bill and the Cybercrimes and Cybersecurity Bill that will regulate online content in an attempt to curb cybercrime.
These two bills make provisions criminalising the non-consensual dissemination of intimate images.
If you are found guilty, you could serve up to three years behind bars or face a hefty fine, or both. In terms of the proposed new law, no person may post private photos or films on the internet without consent or with the intention of causing individual distress.
This new legislation will help in the fight against this type of cyber sexual abuse that has run rampant in recent years.
Therefore, before you post those provocative pictures of your ex who has wronged you, think of the ramifications of your actions before jumping into the proverbial “deep end”.
For more information about this article, you may contact Tuckers Inc on 011 897 1900 or info@tuckers.co.za
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