Effective Strategies for Combating Revenge Porn Erasmus Project

Project Title

Effective Strategies for Combating Revenge Porn

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Health and wellbeing; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

According to the European Institute for Gender Equality (2017), Revenge porn is “Non-consensual pornography, involves the online distribution of sexually graphic photographs or videos without the consent of the individual in the images. The perpetrator is often an ex-partner who obtains images or videos in the course of a prior relationship, and aims to publicly shame and humiliate the victim, in retaliation for ending a relationship.

The negative impact of revenge porn is substantial on the mental and physical health of the victims. It takes a variety of forms, among which suicide, anxiety, panic attacks, and depression are the most prominent. Additionally, the social stigma deriving from the public exposition of photos and videos leads to social isolation increasing the severe impact of revenge porn on the victim’s psychological health and sense of identity.
These facts, together with the increased incidence of revenge porn, led part of EU countries to make revenge porn punishable as a crime (France, Italy, Malta, Germany, Spain), whereas in other EU countries revenge porn is still not regulated on its own. Our transnational comparison between approved criminal Laws on this in EU revealed that imprisonment varies between 3 months and 6 years, and money penalty varies between 3000 and 60000€. In countries in which revenge porn is not regulated on its own, offenders can be prosecuted under the crime of slander.

Despite several states are regulating revenge porn as a crime, the exposition of youngsters to this risk is increasing. As revealed by a meta-analysis of Madigan and colleagues published on JAMA (2018) “Prevalence of Multiple Forms of Sexting Behavior Among Youth A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis” the diffusion of nude or semi-nude materials is common and increasing across youngsters. This study collected evidences from studies with a total of 110380 youngsters with age lower than 18, reporting sending and receiving explicit photos, videos and text. Prevalence rate of sending and receiving these materials is estimated respectively 14,8% and 27,4%. The prevalence of forwarding materials without consent was 12.0%. And the results shows that these percentage are increasing across years. Due to the massive and unethical use of internet and social media.
However, in spite of these aspects, several issues regarding revenge porn remain unaddressed. Beyond statistics of those concerned, the reality is within every family and every person affected by revenge porn. It is they, the individuals and families affected, that our project addresses. The reality is that no matter how harsh the punishment for a revenge porn action is after the fact, the punishment itself cannot reverse its effects on the victim, the more so as offenders are often times teenagers, themselves vulnerable to negative social pressure. Therefore, while recognizing the overwhelming importance of prevention, the goal of our project is to create tools capable of helping the victims in a systematic fashion, as well as to prevent as much as possible this phenomenon apparently intimately linked to modern-life communication habits.

Our project has the goal to reduce revenge porn through a set of 4 intellectual outputs translated into 6 languages (EN, FR, RO, IT, GR, TK).
1) Contrasting Revenge Porn App. A tool for the evaluation of incidence of revenge porn and help them in contrasting through legal means and leading them to psychological support
2) Motivational documentary as preventive tool against revenge porn. A documentary for school education designed reduce the incidence of risky behavior related to revenge porn
3) Psychological Methods for aiding the victims of revenge porn: a psychological protocol for supporting victims of revenge porn
4) Policy recommendation, designed for encouraging policy makers in producing policies and norms for contrasting this crime also through support of evidences during the project’s lifetime

Primary target groups are: school students, school teachers, school psychologists

The outputs are designed to be applicable on school education as at higher risk to by victimized considering also the severe implications that can be transferred also to youth and adult education programs against revenge porn.
Revenge porn is a criminal activity performed mostly online and therefore it should be combated transnationally.
This, together with the fact that EU countries fights revenge porn in different ways and have complementary legal and assistance practices, makes us believe that the transnational partnership that we herein create can add significant value in the fight against this social plague and can do so under the auspices of ERASMUS+.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 196860 Eur

Project Coordinator

Oriensys SRL & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Liceul Tehnologic Nr. 1
• ZIVAC GROUP CENTRAL SRL
• International Institute of Applied Psychology and Human Sciences associazione culturale
• Mehmet Rifat Evyap Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi
• Organization for Promotion of European Issues