MAP Forum

This week, the Government is introducing a series of new laws designed to ‘stop cowardly perpetrators from hiding behind a screen and thinking that means they’re able to facilitate abuse with impunity.’

Three new amendments to last year’s Crime and Policing Bill were presented to Parliament yesterday, focusing on what Alex Davies-Jones, Minister for Victims and Violence Against Women and Girls, has called an ‘epidemic’ of ‘horrific behaviour’.

Building on the bill’s legislation around image-based sexual abuse (such as banning strangulation and suffocation pornography) these additions will make it illegal to screenshot intimate videos without consent, and to create or share ‘semen-defaced’ images without consent.

Depictions of incest will also be banned from porn sites, whereas currently only incest itself is a criminal offence.

Once these new rules — which are currently at the report stage in the House of Lords — come into effect, the first two will carry a sentence of up to six months in prison or a fine, while the third comes with a maximum of 2 years’ imprisonment for possession or 5 years for publication.