A woman was awarded almost £100,000 ($120,000) from a UK court for image-based abuse in what’s thought to be the first time in England and Wales that a judge has awarded compensation for a case of its kind.
(Bloomberg) — A woman was awarded almost £100,000 ($120,000) from a UK court for image-based abuse in what’s thought to be the first time in England and Wales that a judge has awarded compensation for a case of its kind.
Judge Justine Thornton criticized the use of the term “revenge porn” in her ruling, saying it “conveys the impression that a victim somehow deserved what happened to them.” The ruling uses the term “image-based abuse” instead.
The case could act as a blueprint for claimants in similar cases who want to get redress and have images removed from the internet, said Justin Levinson, the woman’s lawyer, adding that it’s significant because it’s the first time such a case has gone in front of a judge, rather than being settled out of court.
There have been over 20,000 criminal complaints to police of image-based abuse since 2015, when it became illegal to share another person’s private sexual photos or videos without consent. A freedom of information request by the Sunday People in 2022 found that only 846 complaints resulted in a criminal charge.
Max Campbell, a partner at Brett Wilson who specializes in privacy claims, said it would help him assess the level of claim for damages in similar cases. “The distress element [of the damages] can be a bit like plucking a number out of the air,” he said. “In terms of negotiating settlements in other cases, one will now be able to point to this case and say this is as serious or even potentially more egregious than this.”
The judgment follows the landmark civil case victory of YouTube celebrity Chrissy Chambers in 2018, who settled out of court with a man who secretly recorded and uploaded videos of her to the internet. Ann Olivarius, the lawyer who represented Chambers in the earlier case, said of this ruling, “I’m delighted about this judgment. Bring as many cases like this as you can. Image based abuse has got to stop.”
The woman in this case, who was not named and given the pseudonym “FGX” by the court, was awarded the damages after her ex-partner covertly recorded naked images of her and published them on pornographic websites.
The man, who was in an intimate relationship with the woman at the time, used a microscopic camera concealed in the bathroom of the home they shared to record images while she was naked without her knowledge.
The woman later found the images on a pornographic website alongside a photograph of her face. She also found screenshots from a payment platform inferring that he was paid for uploading the images.
He was convicted of voyeurism and other criminal sexual offenses on September 10, 2020. He was sentenced to serve a two year suspended sentence and ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years. FGX brought a civil claim against him in Dec. 2020.
The claimant said she suffered from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his actions, resulting in “an enduring personality change.” She also said she suffered from nightmares, finds it hard to trust people and had changed her job to avoid having to go into an office.
Justice Thornton said in the ruling she agrees with the argument that “the impacts on the claimant are akin to the impacts of sexual assault.”
The man did not provide any defense to the High Court claim and failed to attend the court’s proceedings, which Justice Thornton said “deprived the claimant of the opportunity to obtain information about the extent of publication.”
In compensation for the pain and suffering caused, the woman was awarded £60,000 of general damages, and an additional £37,041.61 to compensate for financial losses including hotel accommodation, furniture left behind when she left the defendant’s house, and to pay for past and future therapy treatments.
Damages also included £21,600 to pay an online reputation management company to attempt to remove the images from the sites that host them, and to deindex or “bury” the images on search result pages.
Olivarius said the levels of damages that are typically awarded for similar cases in the US are much higher. Unlike the UK, where the level of compensation is set by judges who use guidelines, juries in the US are allowed to assess the amount of compensation that should be awarded.
“These are low numbers, I recently had a case where I got £80,000 in the UK, and I could have got £1 million in the States,” she said.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.