Victims of Revenge Porn Often Have Nowhere To Turn To

Jenny's boyfriend was trying to persuade her to strip and pose in the nude for him. He said the photographs he would take of her would be for his eyes only. He promised that they would be stored in his computer and kept safe.She believed him.

But when they broke up, the photographs surfaced. He threatened to post the pictures online and then provide a link to her family, her friends and even her employer. Her nightmare had just begun.

Had Jenny been living in California, she would have been in less of a quandary. Governor Jerry Brown has signed into law a Bill criminalising revenge porn, a privacy-breaching act by a former spouse or ex-lover to distribute one's private and explicit photos on the Internet with intent to humiliate the victim.

For most victims, the photos usually appear online only months or even years later, typically after a bad break-up. Under the new statute in California, it is an offence for individuals to take pictures of a person in the nude under the mutual understanding that those images are to remain private, but subsequently circulated without permission such images online with the intent to harass or annoy.

For a first-time offender, a conviction will lead to a six-month jail term and a US$1,000 (RM3,150) fine. In California, it is already a crime to take sexually explicit photos or video images of another person without his or her consent or knowledge.

The measure addresses the increasingly prevalent act of betrayal that typically occurs when a person posts nude images of a former romantic partner online as a way of exacting revenge after a break-up. The images often end up on dozens of revenge porn websites that specialise in publishing such pictures, some of which charge the victims a fee to remove the offending material.

In Malaysia, no one is more familiar with this situation than Datuk Seri Michael Chong, the chairman of MCA's Public Services and Complaints Department. Last year alone, he had to deal with 21 cases. In six of them, compromising photos or videos were actually sent to the women themselves. The rest, while the perpetrators claim to have such material, did not reveal it.

Chong subsequently held four press conferences to warn the public of this threat and to create awareness so women can avoid becoming victims. Unfortunately, his effort was to no avail as the number of cases has not subsided.

This year, as of the end of November, he has encountered 19 cases, six of which had actual incriminating evidence. The majority of the victims are in their 20s and 30s. Ironically, although the victims are educated women, they are also extremely naïve. Some of them have been with their partners for a number of years.

"When the men declare their intention to marry the women, they first ask for proof of their virginity. Then the men convince the women to strip and take pictures of themselves in the nude and send it to them on the pretext of establishing their virtue. That's when the trouble starts," he says.

Recently, the media reported that the blog sweetyoungmalaysiangirls.blogspot.com and Instagram account gadismukabukumy have been taken down as they featured images of young Malaysian women. These images have been used without permission. Not surprisingly, there was a public outcry at the invasion of privacy and sexualisation of these unsuspecting girls.

Whenever victims of revenge porn seek Chong's help, often the women are feeling desperate and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, while some are considering suicide.

"These women often come to me in tears. They are too ashamed to face their family members, their friends and even the people they know at work," he says.

The exact scope of the problem is unclear because many victims never come forward or are simply too afraid to go to the police. Attempts to contact the authorities for statistics have been unsuccessful.

A lawyer, who declined to be named, related a case back in 2011 where the ex-boyfriend of a client had published several topless photos of her online and threatened to publish more. He only stopped doing so after the lawyer threatened the man with legal action for the distribution of the material.

The other common course of action is to lodge a complaint with the Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) on the improper use of the Internet according to the Communications And Multimedia Act 1998 (see accompanying story).

However, unlike California, Malaysia does not have a specific law that criminalises revenge porn. Hence, very few cases are actually brought to court. That is one reason the majority of the victims are reluctant to lodge a police report in the first place.

Chong is understandably frustrated when he comes across such cases. 

"When I ask the women why they allowed themselves to be photographed or recorded on video, the women tell me that they were really in love with the men. So they were willing to give in to their men's every request as they believed the men will not do anything to harm them. Some men even cry and make empty promises just to convince the women," he says.

When these victims come to him, Chong insists that they lodge a police report although not all do so. For victims who have been threatened but have not had their photos or videos distributed, he will support them by playing the role of a mediator. If that fails, he takes action by exposing the men's identity and their despicable acts to the media in order to shame them.

For the majority of the victims, they simply want to put the nightmare behind them. Some have taken the drastic step of uprooting themselves from the country and settling down overseas where no one knows them. One victim moved to Taiwan while another migrated to Australia.

However, for Chong, this is akin to running away from one's problems. He believes that the only solution is to make sure that the law can protect the victim so that she will not be harassed again.

This article was first published in the Dec 14, 2013 issue of The Heat.