It was not an ex-boyfriend who posted intimate images of her on the Internet. It was a technician who had access to her computer just once, to work on it.
He downloaded intimate photos of her and sent them to an overseas web site that distributes such sex-related photos. It included her name, age and a defamatory story with the stolen photos. The photos led to December 2013 phone calls to the woman threatening her with gang rape. The pictures eventually made it to the woman's family and friends, the 20ish King County woman told the Washington House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
It took a "long, arduous and painful" time to find the web site and to persuade it to delete her photos, which still exist elsewhere on the Internet. The police were initially reluctant to get involved and were dismissive of her, she said. The technician was eventually sentenced to a year in prison for stealing the images, but there is no state law specifically addressing images on the Internet without a person’s consent.
At least four bills are working their ways through the Washington Legislature to penalize so-called "revenge porn." But advocates note that the term doesn’t really cover the breadth of the problem.
"This is often described as 'revenge porn.' We think is more accurately described as non-consensual pornography," said David Ward, an attorney with Legal Voice, a Seattle-based women's rights organization.
Wednesday's hearing focused on a bill sponsored by Rep. Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines.
Orwall's bill would allow a victim to seek damages in civil court for posting intimate images without a person’s consent to a maximum of actual damages or $10,000, whichever is greater.
"The purpose of the bill is to protect the dignity and privacy of individuals whose lives are shattered by this action," Orwall said.
King County assistant prosecutor Gary Ernsdorff, who specializes in cyber crime, told the committee that the county woman's photos were loaded onto the Internet by a London company, which charges $500 to a person to remove a photo, with the payment going to a bank in the Philippines. "It's not the original posting that does the danger, but the downstream reposting," he said.
Being angry with an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend is not the sole motive for downloading intimate photos of a non-consenting someone on the Internet, he said. Other reasons include money and sexual satisfaction.
Speaking of the King County woman’s case, he said, "This wasn't revenge porn at all. ... This was an individual just doing it to be cruel."
A bill by Sen. Mike Padden, R-Spokane Valley, deals with civil liability, as does Orwall’s bill, and it was the subject of a hearing last week in the Senate Law & Justice Committee. On Friday, the House Public Safety Committee will hold a hearing on bills by Rep. Vincent Buys, R-Lynden, and by Rep. Sharon Wylie, D-Vancouver, to make the distribution of intimate images without consent a crime.
The King County woman victim testified that the civil penalty alone would be ineffective because a perpetrator could easily dodge any payment ordered by a court. And she contended such a civil payment alone would be insufficient punishment. "You're going to get slapped for doing something so vile?" she said.
Buys' bill would make a first conviction a misdemeanor, a second conviction a gross misdemeanor, and a third conviction a felony.
Committee member Jay Rodne, R-Snoqualmie, said the legislators will have to come up with specific definitions of what an "intimate image" is. The four bills have various degrees of specificity on that subject. "The definitions are very tricky," Legal Voice attorney Ward said.
Ward wants lawmakers to make redistributors liable for the dissemination of non-consensual intimate images, acknowledging that would also be tricky legal turf. Megan Schrader, executive director of Technet, a lobbying coalition of Internet-related businesses covering 14 states, asked that the resulting legislation clarify specifically the legal liabilities of any site redistributing the images.
