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“THINK BEFORE YOU click… There are people like me who will hunt you down and find you.”
Carrie Goldberg is a solicitor based in New York who specialises in cases that deal with internet privacy and is one of the only ones in the state who deals with revenge porn.
She spoke to Colm Flynn for RTÉ’s Drivetime about the cases she deals with, and the extent of the problem of revenge porn she has found from her experience.
“No limit to the cruelty”
In terms of the methods, changing technology has meant that the problem continues to persist but people are always finding new ways to share explicit images as a means of revenge.
Goldberg explained: “I’m always shocked by the creative ways technology is being used to destroy people’s lives… There’s no limit to the cruelty that goes into the non-consensual sharing of images but also the response to it.”
The solicitor decided to move into this area of law after a short-term relationship turned sour, and she was subsequently threatened with the online publication of personal pictures.
Goldberg said: “I got out of a bad relationship, and I was the target of online and offline attack. After I got through that experience… I resolved to become the lawyer that I needed when I was suffering.”
When a client comes in to see her, they are often still just teenagers in secondary school who not only have to had to endure seeing intimate pictures of themselves being shared online but are getting relentlessly harassed about it too.
“When they come in to me, they are in the middle of the hurricane. They don’t know what to do. They’ve never thought about revenge porn. They probably don’t know the term.
They are in a state of shame, of shock, of fear. They are not just dealing with their own sexual privacy and exposure, they’re also dealing with the downstream harassment from the people who consume the revenge porn.
When an image is shared online, there is often not a lot that someone can do to stop it being shared unless it’s spotted early on, according to Goldberg.
She says that, while “it’s not impossible” to take down, an image or video shared on a mainstream porn site creates a major problem whereby an image can be downloaded and shared on a much wider scale.
Experiencing revenge porn herself led to her pursuing this career as she realised that legislation isn’t as strict on cases such as this as it would be in other areas.
She said: “My personal experience did provide this eureka moment where I realised there was no criminal protection here in the United States. Here, we have laws relating to the sharing of financial information, trade secrets and health information.
“When it comes to sexual privacy, we’re really very vulnerable. There’s not the same prioritisation of it on a legislative basis.”
Now, however, there is more protection for people who get images shared online without their permission.
Her advice to those who share these images online is “think before you click”. Goldberg concluded:
There are laws that will prosecute you, there are people like me who will hunt you down and find you.
Tough new laws here
Not an issue confined to the United States, the issue of revenge porn has hit the headlines in Ireland in recent years.
Strict new laws have been introduced, that will see those guilty of sharing explicit media facing jail time and an unlimited fine.
Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has received approval from the Cabinet over the Non Fatal Offences Bill which seeks to address the dissemination of revenge pornography and stalking.
The legal definition of harassment will also be extended to online fora and social media.
Under proposals by the Law Reform Commission, those guilty of sharing explicit images or videos of someone without their consent can be jailed for up to 12 months and fined €5,000 if dealt with at District Court level.
However, those found guilty of more serious forms of online harassment at the Circuit Court can face seven years in jail and unlimited fine.
Women’s Aid has said it is encouraged to hear that Fitzgerald will now draft a bill “providing for new and extended criminal offences in this area and it hopes that this will be a pivotal step in bringing Ireland’s laws into the 21st century”.
Margaret Martin, Director of Women’s Aid, said digital abuse in intimate relationships “is real, it is harmful and it must be treated as a serious crime”.
She added: “The most common form of digital abuse we hear about are damaging rumours being spread about women both personally and professionally and having sexually explicit images and posted online without consent (‘revenge pornography’).”
You can listen to Colm Flynn’s interview with Goldberg by clicking here.
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there are a lot of people out there willing to help. just don’t be afraid or embarrassed to ask.
Best thing you can do is talk. It will be hard but by god does it get easier
Or write it down to try to make sense out of it but talking works…
Some good news for men for a change. Would do no harm to add the text number in the list of help numbers instead of being stuck in the article. Fair play to Console. At least some group seems to be concerned about men.
There need’s to be a place to go like for DVAM. So glad that the fellas are using it and for talking. Huge step. Proud of you all.
I think that is due to stress, how people treat each other, how relationships are suppose to develop according to what people are told, the westernisation of how a man should be a certain way to act to show that he is a man. That the only way to be a man is sex the whole time with strange women, aggression, fighting, treating others with contempt, being hard and nasty as well as ready to start a fight with anyone…
This nonsense is coming from U.S. television telling men that they are not men unless they are total b….ds.
People are too busy chasing images of what they should be from pop culture, TV and the media and it has become a race to be popular by doing what others tell them in order to be popular. In order to be part of a consumerised society and at its core is bullying and greed.
@ Michael Sands. So what way should a man be then?
Rossa, Be himself and not try to be like others, some say to find what you do not like in your life to get an idea to find out what you do like or want in your life then.
Too many are told what will make them happy rather than trying to find this out for themselves. I think what makes people happy is finding their life’s purpose as people are social, they need to be amongst people and not being on FB etc but with people. Secondly, to feel that they have done something meaningful with their time as in work, hobbies etc instead of playing games or watching TV, THAT THERE IS SOMETHING TO SHOW FOR THE TIME THEY USED.
I think if it is gardening, hunting like fishing etc or being creative as in making things that this will make people happier. I think being busy and creative is the best medicine as it gets people from being focused on themselves and their problems and focused onto something different.
To be a man is to be masculine and to be enjoying who you are and what you can do and not to be led about like a dog on a leash by anyone or anything. So what do you think a man should be Rossa?
@ Michael. Unfortunately I am so un- pc in my thinking that I couldn’t possibly share my views on a public forum with my name attached. Primarily we are fathers, brothers and providers and for those of us gifted with natural ability or even inherited fortune we should expect more.
The key to life is to do onto others as you would like done onto you, that is a good start I suppose?
In the case of bullying talking about it can make it worse as bullies who get caught bullying try to control what was said about them by denying it and putting all the blame on their victim from being stupid, evil, an object of fun to being a bully themselves and accusing that person of doing the things the bullies did themselves in order to pass the blame. So you have to be careful who you tell as some bullies are sociopaths and they have friends…
They try to make light out of bullying and control the damage sometimes in order to keep on bullying. The motivation of bullies is control over their victim and their environment, if they can’t effect their victim then they try to control what others think of their victim because control over another person is control for them. If they can’t control their victim then they can control people around that victim, so they use others to satisfy their need for control but that is what sociopaths do. So many who are in such despair are victims of others or circumstances beyond them and that means they feel they have lost control and have become so focused in on their problems that in fact then they are their worst enemy then because they do not see the wider fuller picture as in those who love them, respect them or who like them. They forget or can’t see the options in front of them and they get into dark ways of thinking and feeling because they can’t step back and that is what bullies do to. Bullies are not happy unless they lower someone’s self esteem lower than their own as they live in slurry and try to grab people and drown them in the same slurry that they live in and their victims can’t see then that what others do and think says more about those saying or doing these things than it does about the victim as what people say and do is who and what they are and has nothing to do with facts or the truth but control and bitterness.
I think bullying in society is getting worse and it has to do with people who are angry, envious, wanting to be accepted by a group, who do not want to be bullied themselves so they join in on bullying. a way to proves ones own masculinity to others in order to feel that their manhood isn’t the size of a peanut and transferring anger in one part of their lives into another part by bullying.
I think the best way to defeat suicide is to let people know that they are loved and that their problems are bigger in their head than they are in reality as they can do and be whoever they want as problems are always temporary and it is better to live life and leave the bullies or problem when they live and that is normally in the cesspool that is who they are.
Good that people are reaching out but hoping they get the right support and information when they do.
Time that doctors and pharma companies stop lying to the public and misinformation people. The “chemical imbalance” theory is a myth. People get depressed for various reasons.
The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Harvard Professor Irving Kirsch ~
http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperors-New-Drugs-Antidepressant/dp/0465022006
Psychiatrist Dr Joanna Moncrieff – The Myth of the Chemical Cure: The Politics of Psychiatric Drug Treatment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV1S5zw096U
{ Do not stop or change prescribed psychoactive drugs without talking to a good doctor, due to the dangers of withdrawal }
Something that helps is ASIST training (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) ~
http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/list/4/Mental_Health_Services/NOSP/Training/
http://www.yourmentalhealth.ie/Get-involved/News-events/Events/ ( Under select Period put the next 6 months )
We deserve informed consent about these mind altering drugs. According to medical journalist Robert Whitaker, in his book “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, anti-depressants can turn mild/moderate depression into a chronic, long term condition.
My experience on these drugs, which I unwittingly took for anxiety ~
have your say