Real The REVENGE PORN tragedy

...is why on earth so many young women send intimate photos to their partners at all

Hell hath no fury like a woman ( or man) scorned. The fall- out of love affairs has led to some epic revenge stories: crotches cut out of trousers, belongings burned, cars vandalised.

earlier this year, a white Range Rover parked outside Harrods was decorated with the word ‘CHEATER’ in foot-high, red spray paint. Touché!

But in the internet age, revenge tactics have taken a more sordid and sinister turn. The Crown Prosecution Service announced this week that 206 people had been prosecuted for so-called ‘revenge porn’ offences since new legislation was introduced in April last year.

Revenge porn is the rapidly growing phenomenon of spurned lovers — typically men — posting intimate photographs or sex videos of their expartners on the internet.

Several sickening cases have been covered in the Press. There was Paul Dickenson who — furious that his exgirlfriend had moved on with another man — uploaded a 30-minute video of one of their sex sessions to the world’s largest pornography site.

Michael Heffernan forwarded sexually-explicit pictures of his ex-girlfriend to friends over the WhatsApp messaging service. But the trophy for Chief Worm might go to Clive Weatherhogg, who texted a video of a woman having sex to her sister — on Christmas Day.

Of course, we must delight in the prosecution of these vile specimens. We must celebrate their incarceration. We must dance on the grave of their freedom. But we must also ask the question: why on earth are so many girls and young women putting themselves in this position in the first place?

Don’t they know that with every snap of the smartphone camera they are leaving themselves vulnerable to vengeful lovers, complete strangers or common-or-garden perverts?

If you play with fire, expect to get burned. If you lie with dogs, expect to get fleas. And if you take your kit off and take pictures, expect that at some point they might appear where you don’t want them to.

Of course, the ultimate fault lies with the men who post these pictures or videos online — in the same way that the ultimate fault lies with the house burglar, the bicycle thief or the online fraudster. But to prevent those crimes we take precautions: install house alarms, use bike locks, set passwords.

In the case of revenge porn there is a simple three-point plan to avoid ever becoming a victim:

Never pose for nude pictures or videos.

Never pose for nude pictures or videos.

Never pose for nude pictures or videos.

THISmessage needs to be drummed into the head of every girl and young woman. Because, frankly, the so- called ‘ millennial’ generation needs telling.

A Cosmopolitan magazine survey from 2014 found that a staggering 89 per cent of women from this generation (aged 20-35) had taken naked pictures of themselves.

The sexting culture is endemic among teenagers. Figures released last week showed that over the past year more than 2,000 children have been reported to the police over allegations involving indecent images.

This is just the most serious tip of a very big iceberg.

They’re swapping naked photos in the way we used to swap Panini football stickers. Remember the scene in Grease where Danny brags to his mates about how he ‘got friendly’ with Sandy ‘down in the sa-a-and’?

Fast forward several decades and boys will show their mates exactly how friendly, by playing the whole thing back on their smartphone in high definition. All this is exacting a horrible toll on young people’s mental health — especially when the images are widely shared or used as fodder for blackmail.

A friend’s 15-year-old cousin told of a video that went around his school like wildfire, showing a girl in their class performing oral sex on a boy. Why did he share it? Well, because she wouldn’t do it again, of course.

The U.S. has seen several tragic cases of young women taking their own lives because of sexting blackmail cases, when they became ‘that girl from the video’.

The rise of sexting and sex videos shouldn’t surprise us. For young people in the selfie, Instagram age, everything has to be captured on camera — from sublime sunsets to banal breakfasts.

Things aren’t truly experienced unless they’re captured in digital form. Bringing a phone into the bedroom is a natural next step.

Then there’s the pressure on girls to be ‘ porn- perfect’, to emulate the free- and- easy pornography stars their boyfriends so admire: breasts out, legs akimbo, vacant (read sexy) eyes.

Plus, there are the role models, such as Kim Kardashian, whose famous bottom got its premiere in a leaked sex tape (on which a massive fortune and global fame have been built).

These are monumental pressures to be under.

I don’t suggest that the young women taking naked pictures are harlots. Goodness knows, if I had been born 15 years later, maybe I’d have been susceptible to a silly little Herbert with a bum-fluff moustache and a smartphone, with his pleas that it was ‘sexy’, that ‘everyone does it’, that only boring girls refuse to comply.

But we have a duty to young women to be frank, tough and honest about this: to tell them this is their responsibility, that if they choose to pose for these pictures or videos, they are effectively signing away the rights to the image of their own naked body. That might not be how it should be, but that’s how it is.

Weneed a message strong enough to cut through the heat of the moment and the pressure from their peers. These young women need to ask themselves, when some wheedling Casanova is begging for a picture: ‘Do I want my family to see this? My friends? My neighbours? My colleagues? Mr Bloggs the cornershop owner? Random strangers all over the world?’

If the answer is no, they must say no. But what about truly loving, trusting relationships? Is nowhere safe for a little picture sharing, a little harmless fun? Again, the answer must be no — because everything is hackable.

There was the famous case a couple of years back when Hollywood star Jennifer lawrence and other celebrities had their private iCloud accounts hacked, with extremely compromising and nude pictures posted online.

There was a Danish journalist, emma Holten, who had her emails hacked and images made public. Women in the UK have had intimate photos stolen from their Facebook accounts.

The only fail- safe way to avoid these pictures getting out is not to pose for them in the first place.

I can already hear the militant feminists’ cries going up at all this: ‘Victim blaming!’ ‘Slut shaming!’ ‘Women should be free to do with their bodies what they will, whether that’s taking naked selfies or re-enacting the Kama Sutra on tape!’ ‘Don’t blame women for the crimes of men!’

But this isn’t about apportioning blame, it’s about protecting women and girls. The reality is that the internet is vast and often unpoliceable.

ex-lovers can be vicious and unpredictable. That’s life — and young women need to be better acquainted with these realities before they willingly get their kit off.

So let’s cheer when these scumbags get locked up and hope it deters other worms-in-human form from pressing ‘upload’.

But let’s do a better job of deterring women from setting themselves up for a fall, too.

They need to know that with every picture or video they are rolling the dice: with their dignity, their privacy and their future peace of mind.