The public should pay greater attention to the issue of “digital sexual violence,” and people whose private images have been disseminated without their consent should seek help, the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation said yesterday.
“In recent years, with the advancement of Internet technology, ‘digital sexual violence’ has become a new type of crime that knows no bounds,” the foundation said.
People’s private sexual images continue to be distributed without their consent, as shown by media reports, so the foundation in 2015 established a hotline and Web site to help victims, and their family and friends, consult with professionals, it said.
Photo: CNA
From 2015 to June, the hotline served 374 people, foundation chief executive officer Tu Ying-chiu (杜瑛秋) told a news conference at the Ama Museum in Taipei.
The news conference was held to coincide with this year’s Qixi Festival, also known as Lovers’ Day, which is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar.
People aged 21 to 25 made up the majority, or 24 percent, of callers to the hotline, followed by people aged 26 to 30 at 13 percent, a foundation report said.
Twenty-three percent of the callers declined to disclose their age, or the foundation had no age data for them, the report added.
Nearly 92 percent were female callers, while about 8 percent were male, it said.
For 45 percent of the callers, the party who possessed their private images was a former or current partner, the foundation said.
For 20 percent of the callers, it was an “online friend” who they had never met before, while for 12 percent of them, it was a peer or coworker, it said.
Victim blaming and self-blame are reasons victims often do not seek help, Tu said, citing foundation observations.
The foundation yesterday released a video featuring its charity ambassador, entertainer Huang Lu Tzu-yin (黃路梓茵), also known by her stage name “LuLu,” to encourage victims to seek help and to raise awareness about digital sexual violence.
Using Huang’s influence among adolescents, the foundation hopes to teach them about how to prevent digital sexual violence, it said.
The video, which was recorded in Chinese, is about four-and-a-half minutes long and can be viewed on YouTube.
It takes great courage for victims to seek help, said Albee Chang (張艾筆), executive producer of the video.
The expectations that society places on women and their relationships form a part of their self-identity, foundation chairwoman Theresa Yeh (葉德蘭) said, urging people to work together toward creating a culture where it is “easy for women to refuse” requests for private photographs or videos.
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