Student’s ex-boyfriend claims artwork of his torso is ‘revenge porn’
Judge halts trial of artist accused of embarrassing former lover after using his photo in a project
AN ART student who included a photograph of a former boyfriend’s naked torso in a university project was arrested and charged with making “revenge porn”.
Lauren Smith, 26, included a cropped photograph of the man’s torso in a piece of artwork, which was awarded a first and was published on her artwork Facebook page but none of her personal social media accounts.
The student at the University of Lincoln was charged with disclosing a pri- vate, sexual photograph with intent to cause distress, the charge commonly known as “revenge porn”, after her former boyfriend claimed to have identified himself and was “embarrassed”.
The original image had been “topped and tailed” to edit out the head and genitals, but the complainant said that he could identify himself. The artist made no reference to the subject of the image, which was included alongside other pictures, a court was told.
Ms Smith denied the charge, alleged to have been committed between May and September last year, and she had been due to stand trial at Maidstone Crown Court in Kent yesterday. Before a jury was sworn in, the judge said he had “real misgivings” about the prosecution’s arguments. He highlighted the purpose of the law, which was introduced to tackle the increasing numbers of incidents in which sexually explicit images or videos are uploaded to the internet to humiliate an individual.
Judge Philip St John-stevens questioned whether there was any intent or distress caused. The judge said that Ms Smith’s case had to be viewed in context. “It’s an image within a number of images in a piece of artwork submitted to university and marked for its artistic merit,” he said.
“What is the evidence that the cropped image is of the person the Crown purport it to be? Even if that individual is correct in his belief that it is him, the image has specifically had the head removed and edited and the genitalia edited.
“Nowhere in the artwork does it refer to him or that it was him. If he believes it is him, it is not an offence if it’s only him that thinks it was him. How does anyone else know it is?”
He also said that distress could be caused only if the subject was identifiable by others. “This image has had everything done to it to ensure the identity of the person isn’t revealed. Anyone looking at this could not identify the person in that photograph,” the judge said.
Oliver Dunkin, prosecuting, decided not to submit any evidence and told the court: “We were all in agreement that now we have consideration of the art project and looking at the case properly in the round, we cannot put this forward to a jury.”
The judge entered a formal not guilty verdict and awarded Ms Smith travel costs of £240.50.
Speaking after the hearing, Ms Smith, from Gainsborough, welcomed revenge porn legislation but said that she had not committed such an offence. “I am glad the offence is there because people do do that… But I was just making art and this case is not what the offence is there for.”
An offence of revenge porn carries a maximum prison sentence of two years in England and Wales, and five years in Scotland. It is described as “the sharing of private, sexual materials, either photos or videos, of another person without their consent and with the purpose of causing embarrassment or distress”.
The legislation covers images showing sexual activity, or with genitals, buttocks or breasts exposed or covered only by underwear. Both sharing the material and posting it online is an offence.