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Lessons from England’s policy and laws around image-based sexual abuse
English law and policy around image-based sexual abuse are “inconsistent, out of date and full of gaps”, and Australia may be managing these issues better.
Naomi Neilson
Speaking at the first seminar for the Sydney Institute of Criminology, hosted at Sydney University Law School, London’s Durham University Professor of Law Clare McGlynn said England’s government tends to “legislate in haste” and lacks the understanding of what constitutes image abuse and how it links with other sexual offences.
Ms McGlynn said England’s recent legislative process has demonstrated that there is a lack of understanding around the nature of image-based sexual abuse and how this fit into everyday harassment, as well as the nature of offending more generally.
She also noted the motives for perpetrating some of these abuses have shifted but the UK has yet to catch up to the reality of these changes.
For example, their legislation covers only when an offender commits the abuse out of a desire to cause distress or for the purpose of sexual gratification. It means if photos are taken for the purpose of humour, there is no criminal consequence.
This essentially means victims now have an increased threshold to demonstrate abuse was intended in order to secure a conviction, which sees police officers looking at the personal online pages of offenders to find a specific motive. The sharing of it to show friends, without the intention of the victim finding out, is not a criminal offence.
“The phenomenon of men taking and sharing photos around their group to elevate the social status in a way means they are less bothered about what the victim cares, and more about [how] they are seen by their peers,” Ms McGlynn explained, adding: “The motive and understanding [are] certainly not recognised in the criminal law.”
Ms McGlynn added the other kind of misunderstanding is in how the government has refused, and continues to refuse, to identify this abuse as a sexual offence. This leaves a “fundamental problem” on how legislation understands sexual offences.
“These forms of abuse are on a continuum,” Ms McGlynn said. “They’re on a spectrum and they merge with each other and they interact with each other. It’s possible to have them separated, but I don’t think it’s the best way to do it, to have just creation [of the images] over there, and just have the distribution over there.”
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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