By JAMAL BEN HADDOU 

Inadequate laws are leaving Australian women vulnerable to revenge porn, leading agencies say.

A private Facebook group based in Melbourne was shut down last week after large numbers of sexually explicit images of unsuspecting women were posted online. 

The Melbourne Men’s Society had 7000 members and 4500 membership requests pending.

The group was shut down by Facebook, which said its rules banned “images shared for revenge purposes”. But the move came only after Facebook had previously rejected a number of complaints about the site.

Victims of revenge porn – the posting of sexually explicit images, often of ex-girlfriends, posted without their consent – have limited access to justice, according to La Trobe University senior legal studies lecturer Dr Nicola Henry.

Dr Henry, who is chief investigator on a research grant on the subject, said the law was lagging behind technology.

“It would be good to have some federal offence in place because it communicates to the Australian population that these behaviours are wrong and that the Government is taking them seriously,” she said.

Victoria outlawed the malicious distribution of “intimate” images without a person’s consent in 2014 following similar laws enacted in South Australia. Other states rely on older telecommunication offences to prosecute offenders.

“If the Federal Government takes the lead after Victoria and South Australia then hopefully other states and territories will follow,” Dr Henry said.

While a broad federal offence against harassment exists, it is believed this has only been used to charge one perpetrator even though hundreds of Australian women are victimised by revenge porn.

Last year hundreds of Australian women became victims of a US based revenge porn website raising concerns around the need for a specific national law.

A Senate committee report on the subject in February received 32 submissions and addressed a recommendation put forward by the Victorian Women Lawyers to create a commonwealth offence.

Following their submission to the Australian Labor Party last year, Victorian Women Lawyers is continuing to push for national legislation that will send a clear message to the community.

“Victorian Women Lawyers supports the creation of specific criminal offences at the commonwealth level,” the submission said.

“We believe that there is currently a gap in the law and it ought to be addressed in order to protect women from an emerging form of intimate partner violence.” 

Labor's Senator Tim Watts drafted a private member's Bill last year to amend the Criminal Code Act of 1995 and introduce telecommunications offences for revenge porn.

He said the issue was part of a wider pattern of sexism and gender violence.

“Revenge porn is just the most extreme example of a wider issue which is the threats, abuse and harassment experienced by women online,” he said.

“Revenge porn is [a] gateway into a broader conversation about the way that women are treated online and we need to start taking online harassment more seriously amongst policy makers and law enforcement officials,” he said.

Australia’s leading cyber safety expert Susan Mclean said laws needed to be supported with comprehensive community education.

“It’s a social issue. Laws alone are not going to fix this problem and we’re not going to be able to arrest our way out of it,” she said.

“We’ve got great new laws in Victoria but less than five prosecutions.

“My other concern is the lack of response by police. They are ill-equipped, untrained and often unwilling to deal with these issues because they don’t believe in them and they basically victim blame,” she said.

Amy Cornes is one of hundreds of South Australian women whose private images were shared on an online chat forum last year. She said a culture of victim blaming was letting perpetrators get away with the crime.

“There is way too much victim blaming when it comes to this sort of thing," she said.

“It's not the smartest idea to send nude photos, however, a person's body is their own.”

Amy said tough laws were needed to deter and convict people with malicious intent.

“When a person shares a nude photo of someone else online, they clearly have the intention to hurt and humiliate.

“When there's an intention to hurt someone and potentially damage a career, reputation or family life, why aren't they being punished?”

Aside from providing justice to victims, new laws would deter perpetrators from posting pictures in the first place. Once images are online, it can be difficult to remove them and they may have been re-shared, saved and viewed hundreds of times.

If the Federal Government goes ahead in creating criminal offences, there are several issues lawmakers will consider to make the legislation effective.

Dr Henry stressed the law would need to define a term that was broad enough to include all behaviours that constituted revenge porn. The law would also need to focus on offences that included malicious intent.

“There’s a number of other measures around whether we should introduce some kind of take down agencies to remove images but there’s obviously problems with that because that would only work if it’s an Australian website.”

Ms Henry also said criminal offences alone would not solve the issue.

“The really key point here is that we shouldn’t just rely on the criminal law to fix this problem," she said.

“There should be civil law avenues that are open to victims so they can sue for damages in civil courts. Providing support and advice to victims is a really important measure as well.

“There needs to be a multi-layered approach that encompasses law reform efforts, both criminal and civil, community education and public awareness campaigns so that we have a broad message around ethics in digital spaces.”