The CryingSHAME OF

Image-Based Abuse

“I want the photos to go away.”

It was a phone call I received one balmy Sunday afternoon a few years ago from Neeta (not her real name), a woman whose nude and sexually explicit photos were posted on the internet without her consent. Her erstwhile husband had coerced her into letting him shoot her intimate images over the years that they were married. Sometime after they divorced, the images appeared online. A mutual acquaintance had told her I might be able to help her find a recourse. 

The images had been in circulation on the internet for at least a year. Neeta was articulate, composed and spoke fluently. The range of ramifications on her were among a laundry list faced by most victim-survivors1 of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) or what is commonly known by the misnomer “revenge porn”2 — sexually explicit, nude or partially nude images or videos that are captured, published or distributed without the consent of one or more persons in the frame. She said she had fled to another city and changed careers. Her new social circles and coworkers had eventually found the images. Every second person who knew her was aware of them. There was relentless judgement, victim-blaming, humiliation and even an instance of a male colleague gleefully showing her the photos on his phone at their workplace. A matter of respite was that her family was supportive, perhaps because she had been in an arranged marriage with the person who shot the images and was suspected to have either inadvertently exposed them or intentionally distributed them. Unmarried women and girls are often told they brought it upon themselves by entering a relationship outside marriage, allowing their partner(s) to shoot intimate images, or sending them such images.

Neeta had received a strong recommendation from our mutual acquaintance. Nevertheless, she searched my name online and contemplated for weeks before contacting me. Incidents of IBSA and their ramifications are traumatising; victim-survivors have their apprehensions about trusting anyone to help them without aggravating their distress. She told me she wanted to scrub the images and the accompanying stigma off the Internet and her life. I gave her the lay of the land and stated the possible processes of redressal she could avail, while suggesting that she be prepared for some of those processes to be protracted, expensive, frustrating and re-traumatising, and perhaps for justice to be elusive.

IBSA content goes by various names in India — hidden cam porn, revenge porn, sex scandal, homemade , leaked photos/ videos, sex CD, MMS scandal or MMS, the last two being a reference to the Multimedia Messaging Service format in which IBSA content majorly proliferated over mobile phones in the early 2000s, and CD being a reference to another mode of distribution in the 2000s, the compact disc. IBSA is illegal in theory, but tacitly accepted as a reality of everyday life, so commonplace that over the years it has constituted a plot point of some works of cinema.

“I feel like a snake that has been almost stoned to death. And they continue to throw stones at it just to see if it is dead.” 

“I know I will never be free of this. They will never let me be happy, they will never let me forget. If I show the slightest bit of recovering from this ordeal, they will make sure they rake the issue up again and break my spirit.”

These are the words of two out of an undetermined number of women who were raped, sexually assaulted and abused by Prajwal Revanna, an erstwhile Member of Parliament from Hassan in Karnataka and the scion of a powerful political family. About 3,000 videos shot over a few years by Revanna, presumably to silence the victims and to continue the sexual exploitation, surfaced in April 2024. The two refer to what is arguably the most chilling aspect of IBSA: the victimisation and denial of dignity never stop.

Some flee their homes, change their identities, careers and lifestyles. Some consider suicide. The activists in the Hassan district who are supporting the victim-survivors said they find the phones of the women and their families switched off, their homes locked, and their whereabouts unknown. In what came to be publicly known as the Karavali MMS scandal in 2010, a student in Karavali filed a police report against her former partner because he posted their intimate images and videos online. A few months later, a prospective employer conducted an antecedent check on her, found the police report, and rescinded the job offer while commenting on her “calibre” and “conduct”. A manipulated, nude video of a homemaker in Kerala was posted on a WhatsApp group of the employees of a shop run by her husband. Despite her claim that she was innocent, her husband evicted her from their home, served her a divorce notice, and cut off her access to their children. A forensic investigation later revealed that the video was manipulated. Research conducted by various scholars in the past decade as well as the work of activists and advocates against gender-based violence show that the harms of IBSA for victim-survivors are constant and cumulative, often life-long, and affect all aspects of their lives. 

Victims-survivors are fired from their jobs, lose their clientele and their professional reputations, causing financial ruin, among other things. They may get evicted from their homes, discriminated against while searching for homes to buy or rent, expelled from school, or put in a position where they are forced to drop out. IBSA also brings with it social ostracism, public humiliation, victim-blaming, abandonment by friends, family or partners, jeopardised relationships, and trust issues in future relationships. There is little recompense for the rupture of the lives of victim-survivors. In some parts, it leads to honour killing — the killing of a family member who is believed to have brought shame to the family. It is done in order to “redeem” the family’s “honour” as viewed by society.

Firebrand journalist Rana Ayyub, widely lauded for her investigative political coverage, was targeted as a part of a campaign in 2018 to discredit her. A sexually explicit deepfake video, that is, a pornographic video that was manipulated to show her in it was circulated online. The attackers obtained her mobile phone number and posted it on Twitter along with a screenshot of the video, an act of exposing real-life identities and personal information known as doxxing. The tweet stated that she was “available”.

“She recounts, People started sending me WhatsApp messages asking me for my rates for sex. I was sent to the hospital with heart palpitations and anxiety, the doctor gave me medicine. But I was vomiting, my blood pressure shot up, my body had reacted so violently to the stress.”

IBSA increases the risk of further harassment, abuse and violence, both online or offline. That includes doxxing, extortion (for money or silence), bullying, stalking, physical or sexual violence, and physical, verbal or sexual abuse. 

After the videos of Prajwal Revanna’s alleged acts were released on the internet, the identities of the victim-survivors were revealed by social media users, another act of doxxing. This reportedly led to the harassment of victim-survivors via social media and texts on the phone, and humiliating interactions offline.

A report by The News Minute states, “People have identified the women, met their relatives and shown them circulated material, viciously ensuring that even those who have not seen the videos watch them. Malice is constantly directed at them in the garb of concern. “Oh, are you alive? Someone told me you had tried to kill yourself. Have you seen the pictures? It is you, isn’t it?” These are the queries posed to the women.” 

If the images reveal that women or gender-diverse persons had consensual sex before or outside marriage, they are considered easy and fast. Someone sexually assaulted or raped is considered tainted. All are stigmatised and assumed to not be believed or helped should they report the crime or even tell anyone about it.

Studies have shown that mental health issues experienced by victim-survivors of online IBSA mirror those caused by offline sexual abuse. Post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and other mental health effects are common among victim-survivors, especially those always living in anticipation of bad experiences. The incident and its aftermath run in undercurrents, even in safe situations. As an unnamed victim-survivor in India (let’s call her ‘A’), puts it in an interview, “It’s very difficult, you know, to really let go and laugh even if something’s supremely funny, when all of this has started happening.” 

IBSA also unmasks the identities of anybody who is deemed as straying from the straight and narrow. For example, queer persons, or practitioners of ethical non-monogamy or BDSM, who choose to keep their sexual preferences and identities private, are made vulnerable to more stigma, judgement, harassment and discrimination.

The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative in the US surveyed 1,606 responses from victim-survivors of IBSA in 2014, which show largely the same gamut of ramifications on them. No statistical study or survey that documents the impacts on victim-survivors in India was found at the time of writing. A random sample I created of about 50 news reports pertaining to IBSA incidents in different parts of the country published since 2013 shows suicide or attempted suicide as the most common impact on victims. However, this may be because of the limitations of the sample, or an indicator of either of the news media choosing to report the impact of IBSA mostly when it had led to suicide or of the challenges of reporting the adverse experiences of victims-survivors, or both.
Search engines, social networking sites, free email and other commonly used services on the internet track their users to collect, store and commodify their data, a phenomenon known as surveillance capitalism. As a result, it is not uncommon for victim-survivors who change their identities to discover their new identities linked with IBSA content online. As Sophie Maddocks, a researcher, teacher, and digital rights advocate writes in an article entitled From Non-consensual Pornography to Image- based Sexual Abuse: Charting the Course of a Problem with Many Names, “Maintaining a ‘good’ online identity helps users to do almost anything – from ordering a taxi to entering another country… The assumed truthfulness of visual information, combined with sexist double standards towards women, makes it especially difficult for female victims to rebuild ‘good’ online identities after their intimate photos have been leaked… If they do stay online, the ‘real name’ policies of social networking sites further expose and endanger victims. Even after they have legally changed their names, many are hunted down by cybermobs. On the internet, intimate image abuse has become a form of disempowerment that victims cannot easily defy.”

Take, for instance, the above thread titled “Please I need her nude pics and vids” in the “requests” section of a popular adult forum in India. The section, which is open to logged-in accounts only, is where members post IBSA content, or raise requests for it, and make attempts to doxx the women in the images. The thread started with a pseudonymous user posting a photo of a beaming woman dressed in a turquoise and silver saree, seemingly taken off her social media account along with the text, “I know her, pls share her images & nudes if you have. I’ll reward you.” and “Her videos came 4 years ago. She was a professor.” The thread ends with another user providing a link to a video on Twitter posted on an account that states that it solely posts “18+ adult” content. The video shows the same woman in a sexual act with a man. It also carries the watermark of a large network of pornographic websites that displays content from all over the world, including professionally produced pornography, indicating that the video may also be present on one or more pornographic websites. 

The thread on the forum garnered about 45,000 views in nearly 9 months of its existence. Two comments posted on the Twitter video reveal that she used to be a lecturer in a college in a certain town in Tamil Nadu. One of the comments named her. The Twitter account, now suspended, had around 18,000 followers.

The most viewed thread on the forum at that time, titled “Desi Girls Leaked Photos Collection”, containing thousands of photos of women — clothed, nude, partially nude or sexually explicit — raked in more than 5 million views in less than 5 days. “Collection” or “album” in South Asian countries and “pack” in Mexico and some other countries is shorthand for the pooling of the images and videos of a woman or girl in one post, often accompanied by personally identifying information such as their name, the neighbourhood where they live or the school they attend. Groups of users work in tandem on forums, messaging boards etc. to find and collect as many images, videos and accompanying personal information as possible, mostly on women and girls. Some of the photos seem to be of persons belonging to gender minorities, although gender identity is hard to independently ascertain merely by looking at a photo. Collections are often sold for a small fee, either directly to the buyers or uploaded to groups or channels on messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram where users pay to access them. The thread “Desi Girls Leaked Photos Collection” and many others on the same and other forums are full of posts of users encouraging, praising and thanking each other for contributing images, videos and information about women and girls. The users earned credibility and validation in their community, and ‘reps’ (Reputation Points) on the forum, which were displayed next to each user’s name in their posts. The thread also contained numerous posts describing the sexual acts that they fantasised performing on the women and girls in the photos. Some of the descriptions were of violent acts. In the downstream distribution chain, all the users of the forum are both distributors and consumers of IBSA content. 

Deepfake sexually explicit images of the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift were widely circulated on social media in January this year. A research firm later traced the images to a community on the infamous message board 4chan. The images were generated during a ‘game’ played among community members to create obscene and even violent images of female public figures using freely available image generator tools.

The BBC conducted an investigation into a marketplace on Reddit in 2022 and found hundreds of anonymous profiles trading thousands of non-consensual sexually explicit images and videos of women for money. They posted degrading comments on the women, tried to find and post their social media profiles and personal information, and sent the women threats of rape or extortive demands for sex or more sexual imagery. As Prof Clare McGlynn, an internationally recognised expert on the legal regulation of pornography, sexual violence and online abuse puts it in BBC’s report, “This is not a phenomenon of perverts or weirdos or other oddballs who are doing this. There are too many of them, and it’s tens of thousands of men.”

Reddit, along with Discord, Meta (previously Facebook), X (previously Twitter), Telegram, Instagram, Github, LinkedIn, Spotify, Snapchat and Kik, among others have been named over the years in the Dirty Dozen List, an annual campaign by The National Centre of Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) in the United States “calling out twelve mainstream entities for facilitating, enabling, and even profiting from sexual abuse and exploitation.” IBSA content is distributed on social networks, forums, messaging boards, instant messaging apps and content aggregators, all of which are large-scale, hyper-networked meeting places on the internet that bolster the content that one’s connections engage with. Many of these entities have rules and policies against disseminating imagery termed “non-consensual intimate images” (NCII) and offer mechanisms for takedown of such content. (See here and here.) However, they tend to fail to enforce their own takedown policies, and when such takedowns do happen, the process may not be swift.

Another cluster in the downstream distribution chain is pornographic websites. Some may display IBSA content alongside consensual pornography. Some are meant solely for displaying IBSA content, sometimes publishing it along with the victims’ names or other personally-identifying information. Some are extortion sites that demand money from victim-survivors in return for removing the IBSA content. Some websites reward their users for submitting IBSA content, others scrape or mirror other websites that host IBSA content without sourcing their own content. Almost none of them pauses to verify the age or consent of the persons in the images and videos even though their terms of service may state otherwise. 

All of these entities either host the images and videos or direct their viewers to services for peer-to-peer file distribution, cloud-storage, file-sharing and transfer, and image-sharing websites, some of which are meant solely for distributing nude or sexually explicit images. These services are either running advertisements or require that a subscription or other monetary transaction be made to view IBSA content. (More on this in a later part of this series).

The dark web is another location with extortion and defamation websites, deepfake porn websites, web camera footage showing sextortion, dumps of sexually explicit images and videos that are extracted from hacked email accounts, social media accounts and webcam footage, and more. The dark web, as opposed to the public internet, is hidden by its very nature and can only be accessed via a special browser.

The offline part of downstream distribution consists of technicians and traders. Mobile phone technicians and dealers of discarded devices who retrieve IBSA content from the devices they handle and use it for extortion or pass it on another link in the distribution chain, say, extortionists, for financial gains. Other dealers download IBSA content from the internet and sideload it onto mobile devices or copy it onto memory cards or USB drives to be circulated further, all for a fee. Videos of rape and sexual assault are also sold and bought offline, because offline distribution is harder to trace via technical means compared with online methods. It is also easier for buyers and sellers to vet each other through known persons, vouch for other buyers and sellers, and thus trade within circles of trust. Among those who are not necessarily driven by monetary returns are individuals with a vendetta or those wanting to share the ‘fun’ with their friends by exchanging such content offline, for example, via Bluetooth, memory cards or USB drives. 

An incident of “leaked images”, even consensual ones, often draws reactions about morality and propriety. It becomes the story of the vindictive ex-lover who leaked nude photos out of spite and what may possibly have ‘instigated’ or ‘provoked’ that person. In reality, the downstream distribution of IBSA content is a flourishing industry driven by money and stigma foisted on the victim-survivors. It is an act of organised crime with eager and generous participation and help from loosely networked entities outside the racket.

Charlotte Laws, whose daughter Kayla’s topless photo was posted on the website IsAnyoneUp.com, spent two years in a bid to bring to justice the website’s owner Hunter Moore. The sole purpose of IsAnyoneUp.com was to non-consensually post nude and sexually explicit photos along with the victims’ social media profiles. The website made money by running pornographic advertisements and selling merchandise. Moore, who called himself a “professional life ruiner” and the “king of revenge porn” was arrested in 2014 as a result of Laws’ efforts and a lengthy FBI investigation. The website was shut down.

The young woman ‘A’ says in her interview that her former boyfriend threatened her over a few months that he would post her intimate images online if she did not reinstate their relationship. Her mother noticed a change in her behaviour, that she “was not being herself”. When she finally confided in her mother about the goings-on, her parents were initially very upset with her. However, they later intervened and made the perpetrator back off. As in the case of Neeta, the experiences of Kayla and the unnamed woman show that victim-survivors greatly benefit from timely emotional, psychological and moral support when an incident of IBSA is imminent, in its immediate aftermath and long after it.

Shame is a means of social control and the governance of social behaviour. In a shame-based culture, the honour of men rests on the sexual probity of the women in their families and communities. That ensures that even if the members of the family are supportive of the victim-survivors, they may face some of the same harms that victim-survivors do.

IBSA is a global phenomenon that upends the lives of victim-survivors and robs them of their dignity. There are remarkable similarities across geographies and cultures in the way it is perpetrated. However, some conditions in India make it easier for the IBSA supply chain to thrive, harder to bring perpetrators to book, and reduce the harmful impacts on the lives of victim-survivors. Identity theft is not difficult for criminals who cycle through numerous phone numbers, physical addresses and forged government-issued IDs. Internet tariffs, smartphones, semi-smartphones, and equipment such as tiny wireless cameras are affordable, and can easily be purchased in grey markets without leaving a paper trail. Culturally, privacy is an alien concept. Nosy neighbours and their invasive activities are commonplace; so are community diktats that curb individual freedoms and personal choice even within private spaces and deeply intimate interactions. Someone who demands and values privacy is assumed to have something to hide, and therefore, up to no good. The Supreme Court of India in the Puttaswamy judgement (2017) recognised privacy as a fundamental and inalienable right while the Central Government, oddly for a democracy, opposed it. Most democratic governments would dither to take a stand in a court of law that its citizens do not have a certain fundamental right even though they may lay “reasonable restrictions” and curb their rights. 

While there have been incidents of elected representatives watching pornography in the legislative assembly, the Indian government blocked hundreds of pornographic websites over the years, including many that display consensual pornography and offer the services of sex workers. It also blocked pornographic comics featuring Savita Bhabhi, an entirely fictional character. In March 2024, it blocked 18 online streaming services, also called OTT platforms, that displayed professionally produced adult entertainment for their “obscene and pornographic content.” However, numerous websites freely displaying IBSA content are not on the block lists. Blocking them from being accessed in India still leaves them accessible in other parts of the world, and even in India via circumvention measures such as virtual private networks (VPNs). Websites displaying IBSA content should be shut down and their operators prosecuted. 
Like all sexual abuse and violence, IBSA is about power and control. Its currency is stigma and shame. The dual, patriarchal notions of honour and shame ensure that IBSA victim-survivors are socially punished based on morality and propriety, and the perpetrators are not. Researcher and social entrepreneur Kalpana Vishwanath wrote in “Shame and control: sexuality and power in feminist discourse in India” in 1997, “…though women’s bodies define their identity within the discourses of shame and purity, we don’t know how this structures their lives other than in terms of male and family honour. Women’s bodies and sexuality are circumscribed within these discourses… This idea of shame is located within the body, within how the female/feminine is viewed within Indian culture—as simultaneously impure and dangerous.” A shame-based culture is what imparts a certain value to the non-consensual images of someone in the mundane act of taking a shower or the natural act of having sex. The real crying shame is the acceptance of dehumanising acts such as IBSA, tacit enough to be a rampant occurrence and lucrative enough to form the trading commodity of a flourishing, underground industry.

Some pornographic websites, apps, message boards and services that display IBSA content have not been named in this article in order to avoid publicising them.

This article is a part of a series on IBSA content in India.

The series of articles is focussed on women and gender-diverse victim-survivors and does not cover sextortion involving cis-gender men as victims.