Revenge Porn Helpline Cases and Trends of 2021

Cases continue to rise at the Helpline, increasing by around 40% between 2020 and 2021 from 3146 to 4406. We have seen many of the same issues, but this year we have retroactively made data collection changes to better outline the trends/problems we felt need to be highlighted in 2021.

During 2021 we have continued to see an increase in most of our reported issue types. For “images shared” – where private sexual images have been disclosed – our cases have been reduced by 1% between 2020 and 2021 to just under 1000 cases. Intimate content being shared does continue to be a gendered issue, with reports to the Helpline being from female victims in around 75% of cases. This may seem shocking, but out of four main issues outlined by our data, three of them are gendered issues with females reported to be victims.

RPH remains to have reports of threats being made to share intimate content without monetary gain and voyeurism. The former has remained at a similar caseload to last year, accounting for around 10% of the overall cases for 2021 with it also being affected proportionally by females at 75%. The latter has a similar, low caseload, but due to the nature of voyeurism many of these crimes go undetected before content is shared, thus voyeurism may be seen as a “secondary issue” rather than an initially reported crime. Again, a gendered issue with females being six times more likely to be a victim of voyeurism than males. 

Though it may seem like cases are similar to previous years RPH has seen a shift in their reported cases in 2021 in one category of crime. Unlike years previous years, where “images shared” was our most reported issue, in 2021, “sextortion” became the most reported – though both issues were incredibly close.  Sextortion doubled between 2020 and 2021, making up around 25% of all our cases in 2021. Comparatively to other issues “sextortion” is an issue mainly affected by male victims, in around 90% [88%] of cases. 

Following on from this, as one may expect, due to the nature of “sextortion” being facilitated by overseas gangs, the suspected perpetrators in many of these male-affected cases are from criminal gangs. Conversely, male-perpetrated acts are outlined by most of the female victims that report to the Helpline. In the figure above, you can see that both of these outcomes are the same – for males, the suspected perpetrator is a criminal gang in 41% of the cases, and for females, it is male-perpetrated. This continues to add to the theory around non-consensual image sharing is predominately a female-affected issue, orchestrated by men. This is not to negate the fact that men are affected by this issue, but it is not something we see reported highly at the Helpline.