A British man has been convicted of distributing revenge porn in an unusually cruel case involving his ex-girlfriend’s adolescent brother.
Gary Whicker of Liverpool, England, sent a video of his ex-girlfriend naked and masturbating to her 10-year-old brother in order to shame her.
The young boy didn’t recognize his sister in the video, but he quickly reported it to his mother nonetheless. Whicker and his ex had a falling-out after attending a music festival together in August. The morning after they broke up, Whicker began sending his ex insulting texts and threatening to send the sex video to her family.
A British judge on Tuesday sentenced Whicker to eight months in prison under the United Kingdom’s new revenge porn law.
“I hope Gary Whicker understands the damage and stress he has caused my family,” the victim’s mother said. “I knew what kind of person he was but I never thought he would stoop as low as he did.”
U.K. authorities have begun rapidly prosecuting people for for distributing non-consensual nude or sexualized media since the country’s parliament passed a revenge-porn law in April.
In September, a judge sentenced a young transgender man for posting revealing photos of his ex on Facebook in order to humiliate her. Earlier that month, Paige Mitchell became the first British woman to be sentenced for distributing revenge porn of her ex-girlfriend.
The two cases showed that the British legal system was just as intent on prosecuting revenge-porn cases involving LGBT couples as it was on prosecuting heterosexual men, who constitute the vast majority of revenge-porn perpetrators.
There is no federal revenge-porn statute in the United States, but individual states are increasingly criminalizing the distribution of non-consensual porn. Victims’ advocates are still pushing for a federal law.
H/T The Mirror Online | Photo via Tanner Ford/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman