The Law Commission wants to strengthen the law to protect victims of intimate image abuse.
The key proposals are:
It would be an offence for someone to intentionally take or share an intimate image of a person without their consent
This new base offence would apply regardless of the perpetrator’s motivation and could lead to a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment
If someone takes or shares an intimate image without consent to obtain sexual gratification, or to cause humiliation, alarm or distress, threatens to share an intimate image, or installs hidden equipment, they could receive a sentence of two to three years’ imprisonment.
However, Kate Isaacs, founder of Not Your Porn – which aims to hold the porn industry accountable for the distribution and commercialisation of non-consensual material – said: “The thing that concerns me the most is it doesn’t look like there’s anything in terms of profiting from [image-based sexual abuse] or platform responsibility here, which is really worrying.
“Addressing the installation of equipment such as a hidden camera is all very well and good, but I’ve worked on a number of cases with women who have been secretly recorded without their consent and then that footage has been uploaded to a platform that has allowed someone to profit from that content.”
Women subjected to sexual assault in Queensland are struggling to obtain rape kits and in some cases are being charged for forensic medical examinations.
The horrific details are included in the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce’s final report tabled by Women’s Minister and Attorney General Shannon Fentiman this week.
The revelations, which taskforce chair Justice Margaret McMurdo has described as ‘heart-wrenching’, have prompted the LNP Opposition to demand the Palaszczuk Government “immediately” make rape kits free and available for all women across Queensland.
In one account, a woman travelled 1300km for an examination only to be turned back because of a miscommunication.
Others have had rape kits accidentally destroyed, or are being left to wait for treatment in emergency departments for hours at a time with no food, water or clean clothing.
The report also found that victims who were not eligible for Medicare were in some cases forced to pay for medical treatment.
Growing accounts of sexual assault against women comes as Queensland leads the nation on proportionally higher numbers of women in prison, with incarceration rates directly linked to experiences of ‘lived’ sexual violence.
Findings in the report highlight that one in five women and one in 20 men in Queensland experience sexual violence, but only 13 per cent of sexual assaults are reported to police.
Numbers of women in prison have grown by more than 30 per cent in recent years, almost four times the male offender growth rate.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A woman accused of killing a man can argue at trial that she was justified because he was sexually trafficking her, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a decision that could help define the limits of legal immunity for trafficking victims nationwide.
The justices ruled 4-3 that a 2008 state law that absolves trafficking victims of criminal liability for any offenses committed as a direct result of being trafficked extends to first-degree intentional homicide.
Nearly 40 states have passed laws that give trafficking victims at least some level of criminal immunity, according to Legal Action of Wisconsin, which provides legal help for low-income people.
The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has removed court reporting guidelines described as “transphobic” from its website following heavy criticism.
The guidelines, which advised journalists to refer to trans defendants by their birth name and pronouns, were published by the university’s journalism department on Monday.
The guidelines were accompanied by a 15-page report reviewing “138 reports of court cases involving 39 transgender defendants” in the media.
Among the guidelines, the report advised journalists to “Make clear the biological sex of the defendant high up in the story” and “Use both birth and trans names where available, particularly for sex offences”.
Instructing reporters to “avoid using definitive words without caveat”, the authors wrote: “Headlines which use the word ‘woman’ to describe a transwoman implies that the writer, and publication, agrees with the proposition ‘Transwomen are women’. This is an opinion, not a fact…
The accompanying report claimed: “Defendants are incentivised by the justice system to claim to be trans, and may do so without any plans to change gender.”
Because of the purported incentivisation, the authors advised journalists that: “To refer to a biological male with female pronouns is to tacitly agree with their claim that they are a woman or transwoman. Owing to the incentives of the justice system, this may not be the case.
“Using their chosen pronouns is to collude in their possible deception.”
Binns confirmed to Press Gazette that she had been in contact with the university about the backlash.
“I am confident that the full research paper, and the guidelines it suggests, is in no way transphobic. In fact, I am motivated partly by concerns about the demonisation of the trans community. These suggested guidelines are intended to protect the trans community from being wrongly associated with crime, particularly with sex offenders, who may claim to be trans after arrest.”
Brice Patric Ryschon Williams was charged with 25 counts Possession Of Child Pornography, a Class 2 felony and 18 counts of Criminal Use Of A Communications Facility following a two-year investigation.
Williams is a drag queen who goes by the name Anastasia Diamond, and who has participated in drag events across Pennsylvania. In 2020, Williams won the LGBT Center of Central PA ‘Rising Star’ award.
According to The Glinner Update, Williams is “at least the seventh man who is either a drag queen or a sponsor of drag queens to be arrested for paedophilia offences in recent years”.
Last Tuesday, the CEO and COO of MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub, resigned. The shocking move happened in the wake of a damning investigation by the New Yorker detailing horrific stories of child sexual abuse and nonconsensual videos, which the company monetized with ads and globally distributed to up to 130 million visitors per day.
The same day the companies’ top executives jumped ship, 200 or more MindGeek employees were fired, according to multiple sources. The layoffs were done without even a day’s notice, via Zoom, in batches. One employee said “the people being laid off were forcefully muted so they couldn’t speak or ask questions. The layoff was immediate, and all accounts were disabled within minutes.”
Angry employees close to the top executives began reaching out to me almost immediately, letting me in on some of MindGeek’s best-kept secrets.
But two entities that have been profiting from the content on Pornhub are still escaping needed scrutiny. Namely, Visa and Mastercard.
Whistleblower moderators said they were encouraged to let as much content through as possible. More content equals more site traffic, which results in more ad revenue. One senior manager admitted that Pornhub avoids age verification because it doesn’t want to lose traffic and revenue. “MindGeek loses money. Any age verification devastates traffic,” she complained. “Pornhub stands to lose 50%+ of traffic…. It costs us money to verify and overall it’s a disaster.”
In 2020, the New York Times caused international shockwaves when its exposé, “The Children of Pornhub,” told the harrowing stories of victims sexually abused on Pornhub as children. Within days, Visa and Mastercard announced they were cutting ties with the site, earning positive global media attention for their actions. The CEO of Mastercard went so far as to publicly announce that its own investigation found child sexual abuse material on the site, compelling it to ditch Pornhub.
But the announcements and pronouncements only went halfway. The credit card companies cut off the public-facing transactions, such as Pornhub Premium memberships, but recently a senior MindGeek employee told me (and it was confirmed) that both Visa and Mastercard continue to facilitate profits from Pornhub content—they are just using the “back door” of TrafficJunky where it isn’t as obvious to the public.
It is unacceptable that Visa and Mastercard still enable their cards to generate revenue from Pornhub. Last year, 34 women who were raped, abused, and trafficked on Pornhub—including 14 who were children at the time—sued Visa and Pornhub for allegedly “knowingly profiting” from their exploitation.
We need to hold Visa and Mastercard to their word. They said they were going to stop doing business with Pornhub, so they must stop doing business with Pornhub’s main source of revenue. Lip service won’t stop the global distribution of sex crime footage for money. It’s time for Visa and Mastercard to act on their public promises.”
Drag queens reading or performing to children have been in the news of late, following numerous cases of shocking and inappropriate behaviour. This has led to a backlash, and a backlash against the backlash.
But what’s slipped a bit under the radar amid these revelations is the number of men who dress up as sexual parodies of women in order to read to, or perform in front of, children, who have been arrested for child sexual abuse offences. Until now.
On June 23 it was revealed that Brice Patric Ryschon Williams, who uses the drag name ‘Anastasia Diamond’, had been charged with 43 criminal counts, 25 of which were related to child pornography.
He was only caught after investigators found the name ‘Ana D,’ a shortened version of his drag name, on a Dropbox account that contained child sexual abuse material.
He is at least the seventh man who is either a drag queen or a sponsor of drag queens to be arrested for paedophilia offences in recent years.
In 2019 an organisation called Houston MassResistance investigated the small number of drag queens who were reading to children in public libraries – and found that two of them were convicted child sex offenders.
One of them, William Travis Dees, a former transgender prostitute, served as a ‘greeter’ for young children as they came into the library, even though he had been convicted of sex crimes against four children (aged 4, 5, 6 and 8) and is listed as a “high-risk sex offender.”
Last year, Brett Blomme, the president and CEO of the Cream City Foundation, which operates the Milwaukee Drag Queen Story Hour for local children, was arrested and charged with possessing child pornography depicting the sexual abuse of underage boys, including toddlers. He was later sentenced to nine years in prison.
In 2018 British Airways hired two drag queens to represent the national airline at Brighton Pride on a float that toured the seaside city. One of them, Darren Sewell, aka ‘Crystal Couture’, was convicted of four counts of rape of a boy under 16 in 1999 and broke a court order banning him from contact with children in 2011.
In 2013 Robert Clothier, drag name ‘Lady James’, was jailed after being caught in a police sting operation. He thought he was meeting a man and the two of them were to rape the other man’s two children, a boy of 8 and an 11-year-old girl.
When arrested, he was carrying chocolate-flavoured glow-in-the-dark condoms, girl’s underwear, Easter eggs, heart-shaped hairbands and a Lego toy.
One of the most shocking stories of them all is Kristian Churchill, aka Krystle Caress, who was reported for inappropriate relationships with boys under 16. He was so angry with this that he tried to kill two women by driving into them. Both women survived, but suffered horrific life-altering injuries.
Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles and dozens of other women who say they were sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar are seeking more than $US1 billion from the FBI for failing to stop the sports doctor when it first received allegations against him.
There’s no dispute FBI agents in 2015 knew that Nassar was accused of assaulting gymnasts, but they failed to act, leaving him free to continue to target young women and girls for more than a year.
He pleaded guilty in 2017 and is serving decades in prison.
On May 31, 2022, the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) submitted a brief in opposition to the state’s Motion to Dismiss our civil rights case opposing SB 132, a California law that (among other things) allows male offenders to seek placement in women’s correctional facilities based purely on “gender identity” claims. The men are not required to take hormones or have surgery (most don’t), and over 300 men have already applied. One-third of these male applicants are sex offenders. The full background of the case and our constitutional claims are here.
While we were preparing our opposition to the state’s Motion to Dismiss, one of the male inmates reportedly raped a woman in the yard’s port-a-potty, while a male accomplice stood watch outside. Witness statements indicate that the woman may also have been drugged; she appeared to be intoxicated and was barely conscious just after the incident. A short time after the rape reportedly occurred, prison staff found the woman unresponsive in her cell. The reported rapist, Jonathan Robertson, was not immediately removed from the yard, despite a number of women pleading with housing and medical staff to do something to protect the victim and themselves. The next day, when confronted in the yard by several of these same women, Robertson threatened to rape them as well, saying there was “nothing you bitches can do about it.” More discussion of this incident is here.