Danish National Police say that more than 1,000 people have been charged with “distribution of child pornography” after using Facebook to circulate revenge porn, or nonconsensual pornography, featuring a subject who was 15 years old at the time of the content’s recording.
According to a press release on the arrests, police launched an investigation into the videos after Facebook came forward regarding two videos and a photo being circulated mainly by teenagers in Denmark. While the age of consent is 15 in the country, child pornography laws apply to sexual videos or photos of people under the age of 18.
While a majority of those charged have shared the video “a couple” of times, some have done so hundreds of times. Those charged could potentially face having a “børneattest,” which is a criminal record regarding sexual offenses committed against children that lasts for at least 10 years.
“It is our opinion that young people know that it can have major consequences for the victim to share that kind of material. But they may not know that it is also punishable and that they may be sentenced to distribute child pornography,” police commissioner Flemming Kjærside said in the press release.
According to Jezebel, Denmark strengthened its revenge porn laws less than a year ago, raising the prison penalty for distributing nonconsensual sexual images and videos from six months to two years.
A spokesperson for Facebook told CNN that it has zero-tolerance for child exploitation and sharing revenge porn.
“Our systems run in the background and automatically remove and report intimate content involving children to (the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children) in the US, who in turn will review and dispatch the relevant information to the right law enforcement agencies across the globe,” the spokesperson’s statement read.
H/T Jezebel