Female Judge Victim of Revenge Porn
There was an article today about a Canadian woman judge who stands to lose her job because her husband shared naked photos of her online without her knowledge or permission. A complaint against her argued that the photos could be seen as inherently contrary to the image and concept of integrity of the judiciary…
Sexually explicit media publicly shared online without the consent of the pictured individual, also known as “revenge porn”, is a growing problem. Mary Anne Franks and Danielle Citron are two U.S. law professors who have pioneered U.S. legislation criminalizing revenge porn. They have published interesting articles on this topic, including Criminalizing Revenge Porn and Combating Non-Consensual Pornography. Citron also has a new book entitled Hate Crimes in Cyberspace dealing with, amongst other things, these issues. Franks defines revenge porn as:
[…] the distribution of sexually graphic images of individuals without their consent. This includes images originally obtained without consent (e.g. hidden recordings or recordings of sexual assaults) as well as images originally obtained with consent within the context of a private or confidential relationship (e.g. images consensually given to an intimate partner who later distributes them without consent, popularly referred to as “revenge porn”). Non-consensual pornography does not include images taken of individuals in public or of people engaged in unsolicited and unlawful sexual activity, such as flashing.
Many countries have already enacted laws against revenge porn including Israel, Britain and Germany. In the Unites States, many states already have revenge porn laws. This includes New Jersey since 2003 and more recently, California. In California there is also a new bill, SB 1255, extending the law to make revenge porn a crime regardless of who created the image (it would therefore also cover “selfies”). This Bill was passed unanimously by the California Senate in last August. In Canada, Bill C-13, the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, is an attempt to regulate these types of crimes by proposing to amend the Criminal Code.
In some cases, victims of revenge porn have even been successful in obtaining damages in courts. For example, in the 2009 case J.G. c. M.B., after an ex boyfriend sent nude pictures and videos of his girlfriend without her consent by email, an amount of $39,000 was awarded in damages. The Economist also recently published an interesting article summarizing a few foreign revenge porn cases.
This judge is probably not the first nor the last victim of revenge porn. A 2013 study by McAfee found about 10 percent of ex-partners have threatened to expose risque photos of their ex online. Even more disturbing, the study also found that these ex-partners carried out those threats nearly 60 percent of the time.
Should a Canadian judge her lose job over naked photos posted online? Mary Anne Franks has voiced her opinion: “That a woman who has been violated, who is in fact the victim of vicious behaviour, is actually being called to account for this behaviour – it’s got everything backwards…” She mentioned that it is one of the most disturbing cases she has heard of, because of the implications it has.
This content has been updated on October 9, 2014 at 22 h 20 min.