Ireland is “behind the times” in how it treats victims of image based abuse.
So says one Carlow councillor after thousands of pictures of Irish women, including some underage girls, were leaked from a private forum.
The massive data dump was obtained by lobby group Victims Alliance as they announced online:
KCLR News understands that various colleges across the country have issued their students with a note calling on anybody affected to get in touch. While IT Carlow tweeted this last evening:
Gardai are carrying out enquiries into the matter, but Cllr Adrienne Wallace says there’s very little legal action that the victims can take.
The local People Before Profit representative is calling for such cases to be made a criminal offence, telling KCLR News “There’s nothing that can be done as of now and I think that’s a shocking indictment of where we are in Ireland, we’re behind the times when it comes to tackling cyber attacks and we need to get on this as a matter of urgency”.
She adds “So the harassment and harmful communications and related offence bill was brought forward in 2007 and it’s at the third stage of the Dáil but we need to really move this forward, bring it before the Seanad and make it law in Ireland so that it is a criminal offence, so that you become registered as a sex offender if you trade these images or if you leak them online”.
Petition
An online petition is also gaining thousand of signatures, calling for the sharing of such files to be classified as a criminal offence. As of 6:30am this morning 46,570 had signed it so it’s looking like it’ll exceed its initial 50,000 target. (See that petition here).
Cllr Wallace is urging people to back that, saying “The petition is on change.org and it really is make revenge porn a criminal offence in Ireland so I would encourage people to get online and sign that and on Saturday 28th of November there’s going to be an online rally”.
She also comments “I think it’s very important, Ireland is a progressive country, women have led the way on a lot of progressive changes in Ireland so there’s no way we’re going to accept this, so that we come together collectively online and that we start to challenge it and put pressure on the government and the people who are sharing these images because it’s absolutely disgusting behaviour, we should have a zero tolerance approach to it”.
Help
Anybody affected can contact Gardaí, Women’s Aid or a number of other organisations.
