Revenge Porn Offences 2019 to 2022

Keywords:

Revenge, Porn, Incidents, Sharing, Threatening, Share, Private, Sexual, Photographs, Films, Consent, Depicted, Distress, Threats.

Publication Number:

PUB 1462

FOI Reference Number:

17377

Request Title:

Revenge Porn Offences 2019 to 2022

Date Range:

January 2019 to July 2022

Information Requested:

Request 1:

Please provide data on how many 'revenge porn' incidents were reported in the calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 (to July)

Note: by 'revenge porn’, we mean sharing or threatening to share private sexual photographs or films without the consent of the person depicted and with intent to cause them distress, which is a criminal offence under section 33 of the 2015 Criminal Justice and Courts Act

Request 2:

Please supply data on how many of the ‘revenge porn’ offences reported to the police in the calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 (to July) resulted in the following outcomes:

outcome type 1 (charged/summonsed)

outcome type 14 (Evidential difficulties: suspect not identified; victim does not support further action)

outcome type 15 (Evidential difficulties: suspect identified; victim supports action)

outcome type 16 (Evidential difficulties: suspect identified; victim does not support further action)

Request 3:

For the period between June 2021 and July 2022, please provide data on how many reports of ‘revenge porn’ specifically involved threats to share private sexual photographs or films as opposed to incidents in which these photographs or films had already been shared

Note: The 2021 Domestic Abuse Act expanded section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act to include threats to share private sexual photographs or films without consent of the person depicted and with intent to cause them distress

Request 4:

For the period between June 2021 and July 2022, please provide data on how many of the ‘revenge porn’ offences that specifically included threats to share private photographs or films resulted in outcome types 1, 14, 15 and 16

Request 5:

5a: Please supply data on the sex of victims who reported 'revenge porn’ offences between Jan 2019 and July 2022. Please also supply this data specifically for those who reported ‘threats to share’ from June 2021 to July 2022.

5b: Please supply data on prevalence of victims in different age groups reporting 'revenge porn’ offences between Jan 2019 and July 2022. Please also supply this data specifically for those who reported ‘threats to share’ from June 2021 to July 2022. (For example, ages 0-17, 18-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60+)

5c: Please supply data on the ethnicity of victims reporting 'revenge porn’ offences between Jan 2019 and July 2022. Please also supply this data specifically for those who reported ‘threats to share’ from June 2021 to July 2022.

Note: by 'revenge porn’, we mean sharing or threatening to share private sexual photographs or films without the consent of the person depicted and with intent to cause them distress, which is a criminal offence under section 33 of the 2015 Criminal Justice and Courts Act. The 2021 Domestic Abuse Act expanded section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act to include threats to share private sexual photographs or films without consent of the person depicted and with intent to cause them distress

Disclosure with Exemptions:

Full Refusal with Section 12 Exemption

Information Correct as at:

10 August 2022

Date of Disclosure:

15 August 2022

Related Documents/Links:

N/A

FOI 17377 Response:

FOI Duty  

First Duty – Essex Police holds some of the information relating to your request 

Second Duty – See below 

Fact - It is not possible to extract and verify all the data in your request 

Exemption - Section 12(1) 

Refusal - Section 17(5) of FOIA 

Reasoning – In respect of Requests 3 & 4, all of the incidents have been reported and classified under Home Office Counting Rules for Recorded Crime with the Full Offence Code Title ‘Disclose or threats to disclose private sexual photographs/film with intent to cause distress’.  Therefore, it is not possible to determine which incidents specifically involve/include threats to share private sexual photographs or films.

Each crime / incident file would need to be examined and a manual review of each to determine the nature or precise detail of the offence in order to respond to this request, this would take an estimated 60 minutes per case file – this would take considerable resource to achieve and, therefore, is regarded as excessive and would exceed the time and cost limits under the Act.

Duty to assist – When refusing a request on cost (Section 12(1)/12(2), outside of the act and in effort to assist we can provide the following -

Whilst we cannot report on the exact nature of the offence details we can report the following:

Caveat: The data is correct as at 10/08/2022.

 

Request 1:

The numbers for revenge porn incidents were provided by searching for all incidents with Full Offence Code Title ‘Disclose or threats to disclose private sexual photographs/film with intent to cause distress’ between the requested dates.

R1	Year	Number of incidents reported
	2019	150
	2020	169
	2021	275
	2022 (to 31/07)	190
	Grand Total	784

 There is also a Full Offence Code called ‘‘Disclose private sexual photographs’ but there are ZERO offences since 2017 under this offence type.

 

Request 2:

The following provides Outcome Types in relation to the table above:

R2	Incidents with Outcome Types 1, 1A, 14, 15, 16	Number of incidents reported
	Type 1 - Charged/Summonsed/Postal Requisition	43
	Type 1A - Charged/Summons - alternate offence. Offender has been charged under the alternate offence rule.	1
	Type 14 - Evidential Difficulties Victim Based- Suspect Not Identified: Crime Confirmed But The Victim Either Declines Or Unable To Support Further Police Investigation To Identify The Offender	82
	Type 15 - Named Suspect Identified: Victim Supports Police Action But Evidential Difficulties Prevent Further Action	180
	Type 16 - Named Suspect Identified: Evidential Difficulties Prevent Further Action: Victim Does Not Support (Or Has Withdrawn Support From) Police Action	286
	Grand Total	592

Request 5:

The following table provides incidents reported by Victim gender:

R5a	Gender	Number of incidents reported
	Female	608
	Male	171
	Unknown	5
	Grand Total	784

The following table provides incidents reported by Victim Age Group:

R5b	Victim Age groups	Number of incidents reported
	0-17	101
	18-29	396
	30-39	176
	40-49	75
	50-59	34
	60+	2
	Grand Total	784

 

The following table provides incidents reported by Victim Ethnicity:

R5c	Ethnicity	Number of incidents reported
	Asian	15
	Black	48
	Middle Eastern	4
	Unknown	31
	White - North European	595
	White - South European	11
	Unknown	80
	Grand Total	784

Every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Essex Police is accurate and complete.  However, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries.  Please note although data can be extracted from a number of sources via database queries, the results may be subject to inaccuracies.  Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data.

The Force Information Management Board chaired by the Deputy Chief Constable has oversight of the Force wide programme of work to improve the quality of Force data.  This work has identified data quality leads in all key areas of the business including the Crime and Public Protection Command.  Liaison between the Force Data Quality Team and the Crime and Public Protection Command lead for data quality will identify and resolve issues through a variety of mechanisms to ensure regular and appropriate supervisory oversight.

You may wish to review the following link to the latest published item on the Home Office Counting Rules for Recorded Crime:

Violence against the Person (publishing.service.gov.uk)

The following link is to our publication scheme which includes related articles you may find of interest in Revenge Porn:

Published items | Essex Police