Campaigners are calling on the government to ban revenge porn victims from being identified. The matter is that publicity surrounding convictions only causes more people to search for explicit images. MPs are being demanded to close a legal loophole and bring revenge porn in line with sex offences, which grant anonymity to the victims.

Campaign groups fear that the new law, which was introduced a few months ago amid a bunch of high profile cases involving celebrities, won’t protect people who find their private and sexual images shared online without their consent. Indeed, normal people would be reluctant to give evidence in case they fear their name will be made public. This is understandable: without anonymity, a victim testifying in court faces the risk of their name and details being reported in the press. As a result, the offending images or videos will be shared even more widely, though this is what they fight against.

Apparently, victims need to have confidence they will be treated respectfully. A guarantee of anonymity would encourage them to report revenge porn cases. However, the anonymity for revenge porn victims was overlooked when the new law was “rushed through” in April 2015, and now revenge porn images are given “new life” when the victim’s name is made public in court: the trolls search the web for the images, repost them, screen-grab and give them new life.

More than a dozen people have been prosecuted under revenge porn laws since April 2015. The majority pleaded guilty due to overwhelming evidence on the Internet. However, it could have been much more than a dozen, because now the thought of being publicly identified would deter a victim of so-called “revenge porn” from reporting it.