The GB News presenter said he didn't understand why cyber flashing is being made illegal.
The Government’s Online Safety Bill was published yesterday and contains a number of new offences including the criminalisation of online flashing, which will be punishable with a maximum two year sentence – the same as for indecent exposure.
Research published by the TES “found that 75.8 per cent of girls between the ages of 12 and 18 have been sent unsolicited nude images of boys or men”.
However, GB News’ presenter Tom Harwood started a heated debate on the subject, suggesting that online flashing shouldn’t be a criminal offence.
In a follow up Tweet, Harwood said there was a difference between real life indecent exposure and online flashing, saying “I’d feel really uncomfortable being flashed irl. I’d feel threatened. But I’ve been messaged probably thousands of unsolicited nudes over the years and haven’t felt threatened in that way because of it.”
Twitter user Owen Blacker pointed out that while Harwood may be more comfortable with being sent nudes than other people, many people’s experience of the internet would not mirror his.
The Government is keen to make offences in the online world punishable with the same laws which would apply to offline content. Some cases of ‘cyber flashing’ also happen in the real world, such as on public transport where the person receiving the explicit images may feel unsafe.
Earlier this week, Iain Corby, Executive Director of the Age Verification Providers Association, which represents companies who will provide the technology to verify the age of people looking at adult content, said:
“You would no more expect to see a child walking around Soho entering a pub, casino or strip-club without being challenged at the door, than we should accept this happening online.”
Dino Nocivelli, a partner at the law firm Leigh Day, also criticised Harwood’s tweet.
He told LFF that “Cyber flashing should be considered the same as exposing yourself in public and as a result be made subject to criminal punishment. It is for these reasons that I disagree with Tom Harwood and Michael Fabricant MP’s recent comments on this issue as they have failed to fully consider the impact of each individual recipient of these images.”
“I hope this law change will encourage people to disclose the abusive images that they receive and that the police take the appropriate action to punish abusers and to send a clear message that this conduct is no longer acceptable.”
Police in the UK do not have a great reputation or track record in recent times when it comes to reducing violence against women and girls. The Guardian reported in 2021 that less than 1 in 60 rape cases reported in the UK lead to a charge, and only 1.3% of rape offences in the year to September 2021 were prosecuted. Given the level of anonymity online, it may be much easier to create new sexual offences than to actually prosecute offenders.
The Online Safety Bill does not require social media platforms to verify the real identities of users, which might be necessary to actually prosecute people for cyber flashing.
On the other hand, bringing in a specific law on cyber flashing may be a way to get police to actually take it seriously as an offence. When women do report being sent explicit images in public, the law has often been too weak for the police to pursue the case. Police reports of cyber flashing on trains doubled in 2019, but many cases were thought to be unreported because victims didn’t believe that police would do anything.
This remains a concern. As the Women’s Equality Party pointed out on Twitter, the Bill will still require proof that the perpetrator intended to cause harm.
Journalist Sophie Gallagher also has doubts about the bill. Gallagher says that “cyber flashing will become a criminal offence on the basis of the perpetrator’s motivation – that they wanted to cause distress, alarm, or humiliation, or just generate their own sexual pleasure, by sending the pictures.”
“It can be very hard to prove the motivation of a sender in court; most other sexual offences do not require a malicious motivation to be illegal; and we’ve already seen in the creation of other new laws how a motivation threshold creates problematic loopholes down the road.”
Gallagher said that she had spoken to a number of women who had been unable to bring prosecutions against men in revenge porn cases because the men said they didn’t intend to cause harm. Intent, however, is an important concept in many aspects of the law which affects the severity of the crime.
“Words are one thing, actions are another”, says Dino Nocivelli. There is a huge backlog in the courts, and not enough police to deal with the amount of crimes being reported. Sarah Everard’s killer exposed himself a number of times in public before he became a murderer, something that might have been prevented with earlier intervention.
It will be important to monitor the implementation of the cyber flashing law after it is passed. Despite laws against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) existing in the UK for almost 20 years, there have been almost no prosecutions.
Given the widespread nature of online flashing, prosecutions should follow. If they don’t, it will be due to ongoing failures in the capacity and priorities of the police and justice system.
John Lubbock leads on the Right-Watch project at Left Foot Forward
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