Massachusetts House passes harassment bill to address revenge porn; gives option for law enforcement

By Chris Lisinski

MAY 26, 2022…..The House voted unanimously Thursday to crack down on the distribution of sexually explicit materials without a subject’s consent and to create a new “middle ground” option for law enforcement to take when dealing with teenagers who exchange explicit pictures and videos of themselves or their peers.

With its 154-0 vote, representatives sent to the Senate a proposal to tackle a pair of related, sometimes overlapping issues that have erupted in the digital age: teen sexting, which police under current law have few ways to handle outside of pursuing child pornography charges, and revenge porn, which prosecutors in Massachusetts have struggled to punish.

Forty-eight other states have some form of ban on posting, publishing or disseminating sexually explicit pictures and videos of a person without their permission, even if they originally consented to creating the image, but Massachusetts for years has been an outlier.

The bill (H 4498) would guarantee that the state’s existing criminal harassment laws also apply to nonconsensual distribution of nude pictures, sexual videos and other explicit materials with the intent to “harm, harass, intimidate, threaten or coerce, or with reckless disregard for the likelihood that the person depicted or the person receiving will suffer harm.”

A suspect could be charged after a single incident, closing what lawmakers described as a loophole created by a 2005 Supreme Judicial Court ruling that handcuffed prosecutors from prosecuting revenge porn cases unless three or more incidents took place.

Reform supporters warn that revenge porn has grown increasingly common with internet-connected cellphones now ubiquitous, subjecting many people — particularly women — to immense emotional and social damage, sometimes inflicted by former romantic partners.

Rep. Alyson Sullivan, an Abington Republican, told her colleagues Thursday about a survivor who was coerced into sharing nude images of herself with a classmate “that she liked and thought liked her” when she was a freshman in high school more than a decade ago.

“After sharing these photos with that fellow student, she was sexually assaulted by him, and when she disclosed to a friend what he had done, he took revenge by sharing those pictures with others around the school,” Sullivan said. “Sadly, this victim of a sexual assault quickly became known as the naked picture girl. Hurt, emotionally traumatized by the sexual assault and in continued fear of humiliation by some, she sought justice, but unfortunately, justice was not in her favor 14 years ago. She was advised, instead of being a victim, that she could face charges of sharing those photos of herself. While we failed her 14 years ago, today, that changes.”

That woman was in attendance for the House session on Thursday, according to Sullivan, who praised the “strong, courageous and determined survivors” who shared their stories to press for action.

“I want to say to all of those that are suffering and to all the survivors, I am sorry it has taken us this long,” Sullivan said, turning her eyes up toward guests in the House gallery. “To K.M. and all others that have been victimized, thank you for your strength and your courage. Your voices have moved mountains to help make a significant change and to reduce victimization and to ensure victims have the tools and protections that, unfortunately, you did not.”

The bill also seeks to overhaul law enforcement responses to teen sexting by creating a new offense, separated entirely from child pornography charges, for minors who share explicit materials. Bay Staters ages 16 and 17, who have reached the age of consent but not legal adulthood, would not face any penalties for consensual sexting.

Officials would launch a new diversion program overseen by the attorney general to provide minors who share explicit images of themselves or their peers with education and support rather than defaulting to criminal justice.

“These images can have lifelong consequences. For every sexting scandal reported, an unknown multitude of parents and teens — mostly girls — are just beginning to grasp what it means to live in a world where nothing digital ever truly disappears,” said Rep. Jeff Roy, a Franklin Democrat. “Lawmakers who drafted child pornography or obscenity laws years ago did not write them with these types of youthful indiscretions in mind.”

Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito have been pressing lawmakers for years to address the proliferation of revenge porn. Their bill (H 4291) took a somewhat different approach, calling for creating an entirely new criminal offense for disseminating sexually explicit images without consent rather than ensuring the criminal harassment law applies to those cases.

The administration has hosted several roundtable-style events to allow survivors of the practice to describe its impact and the need for a legislative response.

“We’re one of only two states in the country in which it’s not a crime to make publicly available on the internet pictures that you take of somebody when you had their permission to do so,” Baker said in a GBH News radio interview earlier on Thursday. “If you’ve ever heard women talk about what this does to them, you’d understand why it’s a crime in 48 states and you would not understand why it’s not a crime in Massachusetts.”