Photos of minors shared, sexualised on porn microblogs

Singapore: They are photos that could have belonged in a school yearbook – girls posing during dance rehearsals and boys at the swimming pool or the track, clad in their sports attire.

Instead, they were found on microblogs that publish local pornographic content, drawing lewd comments that range from the suggestive to the obscene.

These microblogs, hosted on content-sharing site Tumblr, came under the spotlight last month when Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) complained to the police that a microblog was targeting its students.

But an online search showed that it was not just students in NP who have been targeted. Many boys and girls – including minors – have had their photos shared and sexualised on these sites, without many options for recourse.

Lawyers said these photos shared on Tumblr exist in a legal grey area.

A few areas of the law may apply, including the Copyright Act, the Children and Young Persons Act (CYPA) and the Personal Data Protection Act, but there are conditions, they said.

For example, under the CYPA, “unless the posted material ... was obscene or pornographic in nature, complaining to the police or the authorities may be futile”, said Gilbert Leong, a senior partner at law firm Dentons Rodyk.

The source of the photos matters too. Consent need not be sought “if the photos were taken off a public source, like the subject’s Facebook page”, said Bryan Tan, a partner at Pinsent Masons MPillay.

“Even with consent ... the issue of moral rights might be useful as a defence,” Tan added.

According to Tumblr’s community guidelines, posters are prohibited from causing harm to minors and they are not allowed to “solicit anything relating to minors that is sexually suggestive or violent”.

But policing can be difficult as microblogs can pop up as suddenly as they can close down, just like the NP microblogs.

Posts can also go viral, making them hard to wipe out.

Psychiatrists say the posters are harming the people whose everyday photos have been sexualised.

“The emotions ... are similar to those being sexually assaulted – a sense of powerlessness, fear, despair and recurrent anxiety,” said Dr Adrian Wang, who runs a private clinic at Gleneagles Hospital.

In the past five years, Dr Lim Boon Leng, a psychiatrist in private practice, has seen “a handful of cases whereby private photos, some lewd, were leaked online and became viral on these sites”.

The patients were “severely traumatised ... and they felt deeply embarrassed and guilty over the incident”, he said.

They can become depressed and suicidal, especially when they are blackmailed or bullied after the photos leaked, said Dr Lim.