Ireland’s justice minister says she is set to add new laws to prevent the non-consensual sharing of intimate images online.
Helen McEntee said she received the anger of Irish citizens on the issue and pledged that new rules would be brought into force “as soon as possible”.
The Irish government is facing trouble after a victims’ support group revealed that hundreds of thousands of private images of women were published online without their consent.
The Victims Alliance said that 140,000 intimate and sexual pictures, including many Irish women, have been dripped and shared on the internet.
The non-consensual sharing of individual images, known as revenge porn, is not considered a criminal offence in Ireland.
Some of the files found by the Victims Alliance did report to include images of underage girls, which is illegal.
In May 2019, the Irish state established planned bill aimed at tackling revenge porn under all forms of communication, but it has not come into force.
Following the Victims Alliance report, thousands of people expressed a petition calling for image-based sexual abuse to be criminalised in Ireland.
The petition was first created four months but now has more than 54,000 impressions.
It has asked for Ireland to aree on Harassment, Harmful Information and related offence bills, which would add those found guilty to the sex offenders register and see them face a wrongful conviction and jail sentence of up to 7 years.
“Women in Ireland survive in persistent concern of having their most private photos published without permission and even being filmed unknowingly,” the petition added.
The leader of Sinn Féin, Mary Lou McDonald, said the Dáil (Irish Parliament) that the pictures were a “profound destruction of women and girls’ rights” and that the report demonstrated the “inadequacy” of Irish law to protect victims from abuse.