Revenge Porn Against Women and the Applicability of Therapeutic Jurisprudence: A Comparative Analysis of Regulations in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

Introduction

The recently published Report by the United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group¹ pointed out that cyber violence against women and girls (Cyber VAWG) is a growing phenomenon all over the world. The UN Broadband Commission explained the term cyber violence against women and girls as including hate speech (publishing a blasphemous libel), hacking (intercepting private communications), identity theft, online stalking (criminal harassment) and uttering threats. It can entail convincing a target to end their lives (counselling suicide or advocating genocide).² It also stated that “the Internet also facilitates other forms of violence against girls and women including trafficking and sex trade. Not only does commercialized sex on the Internet drive the demand for the sex industry overall, it also allows traffickers to use the legal aspects of commercial sex on the Internet as a cover for illegal activities.”

Prior to this explanation, this author in her earlier monograph titled “Cyber Crime and the Victimization of Women: Laws, Rights, and Regulations.” (Halder & Jaishankar, 2011), defined the term “cyber crime against women” as “Crimes targeted against women with a motive to intentionally harm the victim psychologically and physically, using modern telecommunication networks such as internet and mobile phones”. The operational definition provided by Halder and Jaishankar (2011) of the term “Cyber crimes against women” may show the different types of crimes that may be included in this definition: the operational definition says “Cyber crimes against women are:

• •

  Can be either sexual or non sexual in character;

• •

  include online crimes like hacking, morphing, spoofing, obscene publication, cyber stalking, cyber pornography, internet voyeurism, forceful invasion of privacy, cyber defamation, cyber bullying, e-mail harassment, cyber blackmailing and threatening, emotional cheating by impersonation in the internet and intimate partner violence through internet and abetment of such offences;

• •

  May not be contended to economic cyber crimes like severe phishing or identity theft;

• •

  Done with a criminal motive of intentionally harming the reputation of the victim or causing physical harm to the victim either directly or indirectly;

• •

  The offender and the victim may or may not have prior emotional involvement;

• •

  Includes those cyber behaviors which leave the victim traumatized, shocked, even socially secluded and may also cause physical harm;

• •

  Can be done by male or even female perpetrator; however, the targeted victim group is adult women. (Halder & Jaishankar, 2011)