Criminalizing virtual rape

How one rookie Knesset Member set a world standard in punishing unauthorized posting of nude or sexual images

By PAUL ALSTER
Canadian Amanda Todd, 15, committed suicide in October 2012 after being harassed online. (photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)
Canadian Amanda Todd, 15, committed suicide in October 2012 after being harassed online.
(photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)
the harrowing story of a young woman, “Y,” whose estranged boyfriend had a year earlier published intimate images of her on the Internet as revenge for their relationship ending, Yifat Kariv, a 41-year-old mother of four, was horrified.
The report went on to describe how Y’s life had been left in ruins. She had agreed to the pictures being taken by her longtime boyfriend because she thought they would remain private. She had expected they would get married in due course.
They didn’t. The relationship ended. Soon after, the intimate pictures that ruined the young woman’s life were published by her ex-boyfriend on social media. It was “virtual rape.”
The result was devastating. Y attempted to take her life on a number of occasions, moved from town to town and has been on medication ever since. Three years after the fateful moment when the images were made public, she is still struggling to get her life back on track.
When she first saw the news report of Y’s story, Kariv, a social worker specializing in dealing with teenagers and young people, was a candidate for the newly-formed Yesh Atid party led by TV journalist Yair Lapid.
She determined that if she was elected to the Knesset, her very first task would be to try draft legislation that made the publishing of intimate images on the Internet and social media, without the consent of the subject, a criminal act.
KARIV WAS No. 16 on the Yesh Atid list going into the 2013 general elections. Yesh Atid won enough of the votes to gain a remarkable 19 seats, meaning Kariv had comfortably made it into the Knesset.
“My first intention with bringing this law forward was to protect Y,” Kariv, who lives in Hod Hasharon, near Tel Aviv, recalls to The Jerusalem Report. “I didn’t realize it would grow to offer protection to women all over the world.” Her horror at the use of images known colloquially as “virtual rape” or “revenge porn,” as it is also known, is shared by people around the globe. The age of social media has brought remarkable innovation and opportunities for youth, but with it come risks that leave many parents concerned about their children’s safety.
Among the many high-profile cases around the world involving the distribution of intimate images without the individual in question’s permission, that of 15-yearold Canadian Amanda Todd, who committed suicide in October 2012 after being harassed online by a Dutch national, is one of the most heartbreaking. She had been persuaded to expose her breasts to him via webcam more than a year earlier. Through Facebook, he found all her friends, family and school and, after she wouldn’t expose herself again, sent the pictures to everyone she knew. She lost her friends, was bullied and beaten up, suffered from depression, changed schools, her family moved town.
Nothing helped, the harassment continued and Todd eventually killed herself.
Five weeks before taking her own life, Todd posted a YouTube video – now viewed more than 19 million times – in which she used flashcards to tell how she was being blackmailed by the man and bullied online. Such a tragedy could happen to any impressionable young person anywhere.
“My first meeting after the election was with Y,” Kariv relates. “I learned all about her story. I studied the law, and I understood what was missing and what needed to be done to protect young and innocent girls. At that point, no country had a law against this kind of thing. The Internet, social media and the world of computers move so fast and legislation normally moves very, very slowly. The last time legislation relating to such computer content was passed in Israel was back in 1995. The world has changed a great deal since then.
That law is not relevant today, as social media have become a very big part of a completely different world.”
LONG BEFORE she stepped into the political arena, Kariv admits that as a mother she worried about what her children looked at on the Internet, who they were in contact with, and what messages they were sending. “If I wanted to check up on them on WhatsApp, Facebook and other sites, I didn’t always have the opportunity to do it. Sometimes parents can try and check up on their kids for a day or for a week, but you can’t do it all the time. We have to warn them of the dangers on the web. As a professional social worker in the Knesset, I went to the police cyber department and learned a great deal about the dangers,” she says.
Kariv’s proposals were immediately endorsed across the political spectrum in the Knesset, a rare thing in the normally bitterly divided parliament. In January 2014, Israel became the first country in the world to criminalize “virtual rape.”
“I was pleasantly surprised that all the parties supported this legislation, including the ultra-Orthodox and the Arab parties.
Particularly in Arab society there are many stories of young women whose intimate images have been published without them even knowing they had been photographed – people had been spying on them in the shower or while they were sleeping – and these girls have been murdered in so-called ‘honor killings’ to protect their family’s reputation. Sometimes they were photographed on the street just speaking to someone. The Arab parties supported the legislation very wholeheartedly, as did the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual] community. There was absolute cross-party support from both the left and the right in the Knesset.
“Different states in the US asked us to translate our law into English so they could consider it. The British parliament also asked for a copy, as did Sweden, Italy and the UN, but because of the US 1st Amendment on Freedom of Speech, legislation in America has proved challenging,” she says.
Kariv’s determination to criminalize virtual rape in Israel is being emulated around the world; the US, Japan, England and Wales are just the first in an almost certain wave of countries who will follow Israel’s lead. California became the first state in the US to convict a person for virtual rape.
Noe Iniguez was jailed for one year, given 36 months probation, ordered to attend domestic-violence counseling, and ordered to keep away from his victim. Iniguez had posted nude photos of his ex-girlfriend online, including on the Facebook page of her employer, where he also wrote messages encouraging her bosses to fire her for being a “drunk” and a “slut.”
“The conviction is the first by the City Attorney under California’s new “Revenge Porn” statute that prohibits the unauthorized posting of nude or sexual images of an individual with the purpose of causing emotional distress,” a December 1, 2014, statement from the office of Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer confirmed.
“California’s new revenge porn law gives prosecutors a valuable tool to protect victims whose lives and reputations have been upended by a person they once trusted. This conviction sends a strong message that this type of malicious behavior will not be tolerated.”
In February, AFP reported that a new law banning “revenge porn” – sexually explicit images shared online by a former partner without their ex’s consent – was passed in England and Wales. The law means that people caught sharing such images on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, or via SMS and email, could face up to two years in prison.
Kariv says the virtual rape law has already changed attitudes in Israel.
“In the past, if a girl came to the police station to report that someone had uploaded her images onto the Internet, the police would have treated it only as a violation of privacy,” Kariv explains. “Now, because of my law, the crime is sexual harassment and the perpetrator can be jailed for up to five years. It has completely changed attitudes in the police service. In the past, they would just fill out a standard form, but now they call in special investigators.
“There are currently 214 cases the police are investigating since the legislation. The man who attacked Y is still free, though, because the legislation was not in place when the offence occurred and it cannot be applied retroactively.”
The other significant changes prompted by Kariv’s law are how children and young people are being educated about the dangers of circulating images among “friends.” “I can tell you that we also changed attitudes among teenagers and in schools,” she asserts. “Now, almost every school teaches this legislation to its pupils.
They teach about sexual harassment, and almost every young person in Israel has heard about it. The youngest victims of cases being investigated at the moment, I believe, are around 11 or 12 years old. The surge in the number of people using smart phones and iPhones makes the law so important.”
The virtual rape law was one of three laws Kariv successfully saw through the truncated 19th Knesset in the mere 20 months she served as a member of parliament.
But if she thought cross-party support on other key social issues would also be forthcoming, she soon realized – with her proposed second bill to increase the representation of women in local government – that things can change very quickly.
“THE REPRESENTATION of women in the municipalities is less than 10 percent; in the Arab sector virtually no women are represented and there are very few female ultra-Orthodox representatives. I proposed that in the next local elections (2017), any party that has at least a one-third quota of women representatives will receive a 15 percent increased contribution from central government for local election funding.
I hope that every local party will try to find more women representatives. But on this idea they really came after me,” Kariv stresses, eyes rolling. She’s an engaging woman, learning the rough ’n tumble of politics the hard way, as she goes along.
“The ultra-Orthodox parties in the Knesset were not happy. We stayed up in the Knesset three nights in a row debating this bill as they tried to make sure that people would give up, go home, and I would lose.
It was a classic filibuster. The Arab parties also opposed it initially, but in the end they came around a little. The ultra-Orthodox parties believe political life is only for men. Women should be at home doing other things. They argued that women can tell their men what to do, but it is the men who should do it.”
In the end, Kariv recalls, the bill passed.
Its success in attempting to bring more women into local politics will only be judged in 2017, however, and Kariv fears that if the general election produces a right-wing government that includes the religious parties, the law could well be repealed.
During what appears to have been a highly productive but all-too-brief first taste of the Knesset, Kariv also managed to pass a third piece of legislation, which gives anyone who reports a sexual crime to the police the right to choose the sex of the investigating officer. It is no secret that most women do not report sex crimes for fear of the questions they will have to answer, invariably posed by male police officers.
“The problem is that there are not yet sufficient female police officers,” she admits.
“The ministry in charge of the police has now promised me they will recruit more female officers who can investigate cases of rape or violence within families, or against children. The bigger picture is that because of this law there will be more female police investigators all over the country. Especially now, when people hear of so many police officers themselves being investigated for sexual harassment, it is even less likely that women will come forward and report crimes against them.
This bill is very important.” ■ Paul Alster is an Israel-based journalist. His website is www.paulalster.com and he can be followed on Twitter @paul_alster