Page 1945 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2017
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of herself and sends it to her romantic partner, that is her right. The proposed legislation specifically addresses consensual sharing of intimate images for those under age and ensures that no young person will be charged with child pornography offences simply for having intimate pictures of another person under age which were shared with them consensually.
As part of this, we propose a requirement that the Director of Public Prosecution’s approval must be sought before proceeding with any prosecution of an offence for those aged under 16. We know that this issue is more widespread than we want to admit in the ACT. The Canberra Rape Crisis Centre told me that they have over 80 young women on their waiting list. The vast majority of these women have experienced technology-facilitated abuse.
Similarly, as I said, we know that imaged-based abuse is higher for lesbian, gay and bisexual Australians, and we have no reason to believe this is not happening in the ACT. In fact, in a recent case in the ACT a group of young men, some under the age of 18, targeted gay men on Grindr, a dating app for gay men.
They exploited the trust of other people via the app to extract information and footage of them and then proceeded to extort, threaten and blackmail them. Tragically in this case, a young man who had been a victim of targeted blackmail took his own life. While the court could not prove that the extortion and blackmail attempts were directly to blame, it is clear that they were a factor.
The ACT AIDS Action Council at the time indicated that there were a number of young gay men in our community experiencing this sort of behaviour, this crime. In both the Grindr case and the earlier ones with ACT schools, the perpetrators were teenage men. The scale of the problem shows the need to take not just a tough-on-crime approach to technology facilitated abuse but also the need to work on changing attitudes and beliefs, especially amongst young people. It is critically important to ensure that our young people are taught from an early age, at school and at home—in fact, everywhere—about respectful relationships.
It is not just a legal problem. This is primarily a cultural problem. This behaviour is a manifestation of technological advances, the growing normalisation of taking intimate selfies and the growing trend of using these images to extort, exploit, coerce, threaten and intimidate others. These inappropriate uses of images aim for power, control and coercion over others.
Their increasing prevalence sends a clear, unequivocal message that we as a community need to take this seriously and that it will not be tolerated. I am very pleased that this tripartisan agreement in the Assembly will send a very clear message to the community: this will not be tolerated.
It is important for us to recognise that the initial act of documenting intimate or sexual moments is normal and that it is consistent with community standards. We need to be careful to maintain a sex-positive lens over any reforms and to ensure that we do not criticise, shame or demean individuals taking part in consensual behaviour that involves them sharing intimate images of themselves.
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