THE DEPARTMENT OF Justice is asking anyone who has experienced intimate images being shared online without their consent to report the content to a hotline.

The national centre for combatting illegal content online, Hotline, can work with the gardaí on image abuse cases and help with having content removed.

Hotline, which was set up in 1999, is now “broadening its scope to provide a service for reporting intimate images shared without consent”.

Reports of child sexual abuse material, sexual exploitation of children, racism and xenophobia online can also be made through its website.

The Department of Justice is launching a new campaign today aimed at combatting the sharing of intimate images online without consent.

Minister of State for Civil and Criminal Justice Hildegarde Naughton said that “sharing an intimate image of someone without their consent is abhorrent” and that it can have “long-lasting and harmful emotional and mental health effects”.

“Sharing or threatening to share intimate images is a form of abuse, and there are no excuses for it,” Naughton said.

“If you share an intimate image without consent, you share in the abuse and there is legislation in place with appropriate punitive measures that will challenge the actions of these abusers.”

New offences that criminalise non-consensual distribution of intimate images were created earlier this year.

The Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act – known as Coco’s Law after Nicole “Coco” Fox who died by suicide in 2018 after being abused online for years – was enacted on 10 February.

Under the act, distributing or publishing intimate images without consent and with an intent to cause harm can carry an unlimited fine and/or seven years’ imprisonment.

Additionally, taking, distributing or publishing intimate images without consent – even with no specific intent to cause harm – carries a maximum penalty of €5,000 fine and/or 12 months imprisonment.

Naughton said that Coco’s Law “represents a big step forward in tackling harassment and harmful communications and this campaign is about raising awareness of various aspects of this legislation”.

“Abusers can often use the threat of sharing intimate images as an element of coercive control in relationships,” she said.

“The message must and will be heard that sharing or threatening to share intimate images it will not be tolerated under any circumstances both by the law and by wider society.”

CEO of Goss Media Alexandra Ryan, who experienced image-based abuse five years ago, said that it is “important now more than ever to give a voice to victims who have been through something similar, or in some cases, a lot worse”.

“I think it’s so important that people – victims and abusers – now understand that sending or sharing an intimate image of someone without their consent has serious consequences,” Ryan said.

Research commissioned by the Department of Justice found that one in 20 adults say they have had an intimate image of themselves shared online without their consent, the department said.

That rises to one in 10 among young people between 18 and 37.