England was two months into the first 2020 lockdown and Georgie Matthews was alone in her bedroom in Norwich. The 28-year-old had just received a private message via her professional Facebook page from an anonymous sender. As she opened her phone to look closer, she saw its contents: three intimate photographs of her. Although she recognised the pictures, the context made no sense. As she stared at the screen, she collapsed onto her bed.

The accompanying note warned Georgie that the pictures – which she had consented to at the time – were now available online for the world to see. The good samaritan did not identify themselves other than to flag the images. After a brief chat, they were gone.

“It was an absolute shock to know these things still existed, let alone had been seen by anyone,” Georgie tells Stylist. “I was just in crisis mode.” Prompted by a friend, Georgie called the police.

A so-called ‘revenge porn’ law has been in place in England and Wales since 2015. Previously, the distribution of private images might have been prosecuted under malicious communications legislation, but this newer law was meant to create a specific offence for the digital age: to target distribution without the person’s consent and with the intention of causing them distress.

But, just six years later, experts are calling for the government to do more. To go further in the upcoming Online Safety Bill and address the now obvious failings of the 2015 legislation and future-proof the law with regards to new forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG). 

A committee will report any bill amendment plans by 10 December – but what needs to change?     

Police investigated Georgie’s case from May to December but they were unable to verify the Facebook sender. During those months she says her life felt “grey and empty”. “It was just getting through each day,” she says. “I was falling apart.” She missed days of work and on one occasion rang her sister to say: “Is there any point to anything I’m doing with my life right now?”

Then came a breakthrough: a text message confession. But there was a problem. The sender said they “never meant to hurt” Georgie. This innocuous phrase exposed a loophole. The 2015 law requires both Georgie’s lack of consent and the intention of causing her distress to be illegal. “Being told [the confession] wouldn’t make a difference was shattering,” says Georgie.

Georgie still does not know how widely her images were shared or how long they’d been up, and 18 months later she is still dealing with the aftermath. She struggles to watch certain films or comedy and finds dating hard. “This experience has really taken a lot away from me. [I’m] still having to find the new version of me… I am a new person.” 

It was just before lockdown that Madison Elliott, 25, from the north-east of England, also discovered that explicit images of her were going viral. Elliott, who had to quit her nursing degree because of a health condition, had been doing online sex work for two years under a pseudonym – although she had told close friends and family.

A few months after she started, Madison googled her name and found multiple clips, taken non-consensually and secretly during a private cam session, had been uploaded to a pornography site. “I was in my underwear, you could see my face and I was clearly identifiable,” she says. “My stomach sank”. She filed for them to be removed and tried to move on.

It wasn’t until a year later, in March 2020, that “things turned absolutely upside down”. Over the course of a week, old university friends, school peers and ex-partners all got in contact to say the videos were being shared in her Welsh hometown. 

“I remember shaking and thinking this is uncontrollable now,” she says. Then, the unimaginable happened, people in her new town – 260 miles and a six-hour drive away from Wales – started sharing them too. 

“It was one of the most horrendous moments of my life, I’d spent the last year and a half building my life here,” she says. “It all just came shattering down.” Now, Madison feared even going to the corner shop in case someone recognised her.

“I had no control whatsoever over what was going on.” Madison rang the Revenge Porn Helpline and the police – who said she could make a claim of harassment but not “revenge porn” because of the nature of her work. She felt unsupported and did not pursue it any further. “I think it will always impact me for the rest of my life. I’ll never be able to forget.”

In both Georgie and Madison’s cases, the current law failed to help. Now, a report by the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) coalition calls on the opportunity of the Online Safety Bill to rectify this. But so far the draft of the government bill, published in May, does not mention image-based abuse at all. In light of this, EVAW has published specific changes it wants to see.

These include: naming VAWG as a specific harm; publishing a code of practice for dealing with investigations; a regulator with the power to issue takedown notices; and ring-fencing funding. 

Sophie Mortimer, helpline manager for the Revenge Porn Helpline, says: “The evolution of the behaviours around intimate image abuse have evolved significantly… the law that was enacted at that time was catering for a very narrow perception of what intimate image abuse was.”

Now, Mortimer says, we are “seeing a wide range of extremely harmful behaviours that fall outside the current legal frameworks” like in Georgie and Madison’s cases, but also includes deepfake – computer-generated images – and cyber flashing – unsolicited sending of images.

Clare McGlynn, a professor of law at Durham University, with expertise in image-based sexual abuse agrees that reform is “long overdue”. “The laws are outdated, confusing and riddled with gaps in protection,” she says. “The Online Safety Bill provides a vital opportunity to strengthen the law.” 

McGlynn highlights that one of the issues is that survivors do not get automatic anonymity because it is classed as communication, not a sexual offence.

This was one of the biggest frustrations of Ellesha May Garner, 26, from Nottingham, who found out that videos of her that she didn’t know had been filmed were posted on a porn tube site in August 2018. “It made my skin crawl,” she says. Not only was Ellesha frustrated with how it was categorised but also with the victim-blaming she experienced and the term “revenge porn”.

“The name needs to be changed,” Ellesha says. Georgie agrees this is one of the things she’d like to see changed to image-based sexual abuse (IBSA). “It sexualises abuse, you’re calling it porn when this is abuse. It is really dehumanising and shaming.” 

Other elements they would like to see changed include replacing “intent to harm” with criminalisation based on lack of consent, less pressure for women to search for evidence themselves, and more money for cyber teams.

Madison would also like to see an independent body able to issue takedown notices to the porn sites for free, on behalf of survivors. The current situation requires survivors to share their name, address and personal details to file a notice, another potential barrier to removal.

As it stands, the bill is “flimsy to put it lightly” says Kate Isaacs of Not Your Porn, a campaign to make hosting non-consensual content illegal. “If we don’t act now, we risk another decade of abuse with no protection for victims and very little consequences for perpetrators.” Rebecca Hitchen from EVAW says the bill must “have teeth” or the opportunity is wasted.

Some are worried that, in reality, whatever promises are made will mean very little change in the future, as technology outpaces the law. “The current Bill falls short of recognising that the online space is a context for existing as well as new forms of violence against women,” says Dr Fiona Vera Gray from the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University.

As the committee deadline of 10 December approaches, survivors and experts are calling on the government to recognise this opportunity and bridge the gaps now apparent in the old law; to make it harder for survivors to fall through the cracks, where they exist, and to ensure that legislation isn’t a sticking plaster on the growing problem of online violence against women. 

If you, or anyone you know, needs help and support with image-based sexual abuse you can contact Women’s Aid or Victim Support. 

Images: Getty, James Norman, Ellesha May Garner