It is good to see that the UK has reacted quickly on the issue of revenge porn.  A new law has just come into place which says that if you distribute a private sexual image of someone without their consent and with the intention to cause them distress, you can get up to 2 years in jail.  The definition of a sexual image would include anything they say that “a reasonable person would consider to be sexual” and that that would include somebody who is posing in a sexually provocative way.  

In other words, the photograph does not have to be of somebody in the nude, but underwear pictures for example posted with the intention of causing someone distress could lead to you spending 2 years in jail.  I think this is good legislation and I think that it needs to be enacted around the world.  It is tragic that so many people, although this is generally something that happens with younger people, can cause so much distress when a relationship goes wrong and their partner – usually a male – starts distributing their pictures around.  In America, an operator of a revenge porn site called u.gotposted.com was recently sentenced to 18 years in jail for hosting the revenge porn photographs.  Media reports bring this home in South Africa – the young lady in a school video, a few years ago, which showed her having sex with two men, has now committed suicide.  Laws like this would have frightened off people from posting and circulating such videos and potentially saved her life had we had them.