‘STRANGERS STOLE MY PHOTOS’
NOELLE’S INNOCENT WEB SEARCH LED TO A SHOCKING DISCOVERY
Enter the name Noelle Martin into an internet search, and more than nine million results appear, most of which are about her advocacy for online safety.
But a decade ago, it was a different story. Noelle was 18 when she decided to play around with Google’s reverse image search function. In an instant, her screen was flooded with her own photos, which had been stolen from her social media accounts and photoshopped into explicit pornographic images.
“I felt sick and my blood rushed to my head,” Noelle tells New Idea. “I didn’t even know this was a thing – I’d never even had a boyfriend or taken a nude photo of myself, let alone shared it.”
After finding her images
plastered on dozens of porn websites around the world, Noelle, a law graduate, took her laptop to the police station, only to learn there were no laws that made sharing intimate images – real or fake – illegal.
Then the perpetrator created a deepfake pornographic video of her – a doctored video depicting someone doing or saying something that they didn’t do – and uploaded it.
“It was awful because not only had they stolen my images, but they were putting my name on the explicit photos and videos, too,” Noelle recalls. “I was so ashamed and humiliated and embarrassed. I made several attempts to take my own life because I couldn’t see a future.”
Noelle, now 27, found the strength to tell the world she had been the victim of ‘parasite porn’ and became an advocate for laws to criminalise the behaviour.
Despite being abused and fat-shamed online during the process,
‘WE NEED TO CONSIDER A GLOBAL STRATEGY TO TACKLE THE ISSUE’
she has stood tall and been instrumental in introducing new laws that criminalise image-based sexual abuse in Australia.
“Australia’s online safety laws and reforms are woefully inadequate,” she says. “If we are truly committed to online safety, we need to be considering a global strategy to tackle the issue.”
• If you or anyone you know is struggling to cope, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit lifeline.org.au