Women, image based sexual abuse and the pursuit of justice

Abstract

Through the use of 28 in-depth interviews with victims, activists, and criminal justice staff, this research details the emotional, physical, and social impact of image based sexual abuse (IBSA) on women’s everyday lives, and identifies some of the key policing and legislative issues which prevent women from achieving justice within the criminal justice system. In doing so, this study is the first and one of the largest pieces of research to examine IBSA through the use of in-depth interviews with victims in the UK. Therefore, it is able to significantly contribute to our understanding of victims’ experiences. By taking a radical feminist and victimological approach, this research also highlights the gendered nature of IBSA, including the motivations behind perpetration, the normalisation of sexual violence against women in online environments, and the link between IBSA and domestic abuse. Importantly, by examining IBSA as part of a victimisation process rather than as an event, this research identifies IBSA as being interlinked with coercion, control, blackmail, harassment, and verbal and physical abuse. Thus, the research places IBSA on Kelly’s (1988) continuum of violence. The research also identifies continued problematic responses within policing and legislation, demonstrating a failure of the state to account for gendered violence and the silencing of women’s experiences. The findings raise fundamental concerns; they call for greater recognition of IBSA as a serious form of sexual violence against women, and for a radical overhaul of criminal justice responses in order to aid women in their pursuit of justice.