YOU SHOULDN’T TAKE pictures of yourself that you don’t want to be on the internet because somehow they always end up there.
That’s the advice of DJ Catalyst, a supporter of Hunter Moore – a revenge porn site operator from the US who pleaded guilty to charges of hacking and identity theft in February. He faces up to seven years in prison.
Catalyst defended Moore’s actions on the Channel 4 documentary Revenge Porn. He said Moore was acting in character when he posted explicit photos to his site and had been “painted in a bad light by the media”.
During the show presenter Anna Richardson examined some of the evidence used against Moore – this included a cease and desist letter he received from a young woman’s parents asking for explicit images of her to be removed from his site as she was suicidal due to their publication.
Instead of taking down the images he posted the letter online and viewers of the site encouraged the women to kill herself.
Richardson interviewed several people on the show – both those who have posted revenge porn or been the victims of it.
One woman said she felt as though she had been “abused 30,000 times” after her ex-boyfriend posted several naked images of her online, along with her full name, contact information, the university she was attending and other personal details.
When she reported him to the police, she said they told her it was her fault because she took the photos in the first place.
‘Stalker territory’
Richardson has explored various issues related to sex in previous documentaries and said she likes to consider herself “a bit of an armchair expert”.
However, she said she was unaware of the idea of revenge porn until recently, describing the practice as “stalker territory”.
Police officer Gary Shewan noted: “The internet has brought a whole new toolkit to the stalker.”
“Anyone who has ever taken a sexy selfie is at risk,” Richardson warned.
In a bid to get to experience revenge porn firsthand, she posted nude photos of herself to a revenge porn site.
The comments she received were disturbing, with one person writing: “I would destroy this b***h and treat her like the slutbag she is.”
Richardson said she was shocked by the level of abuse aimed at revenge porn victims, primarily women, by people “hiding behind their keyboards”.
Several women have been threatened with rape and other violent acts via these sites.
Richardson’s photos were viewed tens of thousands of times within days. They were abruptly removed from the site. She believes this happened after the site’s operators were tipped off that was a journalist.
The programme led to a lot of debate on Twitter, with most people praising Richardson for her actions.
A recent law introduced in the UK makes it a criminal offence to upload intimate pictures of a person without their consent. However, hosting the images on a site is not illegal, making it sometimes difficult to have photos removed.
At least 11 people have been found guilty of the crime so far.
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