This is an English translation of the Norwegian cover story on revenge porn, “Avkledd på nettet” (“Undressed online”), originally printed in D2 magazine on January 23rd 2015. Published by: Dagens Næringsliv

Author: EMMA CLARE Photos: SIGURD FANDANGO & LARS PETTER PETTERSEN
(Carrie Goldberg photographed by Elizabeth White)

“I am famous all over the world because of this,” says Emma Holten (23), when D2 meets her in Copenhagen.

Four years ago, intimate photos of Holten were posted online without her consent. The images, the oldest of which was taken when she was in a relationship at 17, were published along with her name and contact information. Ever since, men of all ages have contacted her nearly every day: Some just want to say that they saw her naked on the internet, or that they got turned on and masturbated to the photos. Others tell her she is a “disgusting whore” – or something far worse – and threaten to send the photos to her employer if she doesn’t send them more. She has been forced to talk about them in job interviews, as it is the first search result that comes up if you google her name. She has been harassed on the street, strangers have turned up at her house and approached her at parties to ‘see what she’s like in real life’. “This is something that will follow me for the rest of my life,” she says.

Jennifer Lawrence: "It is a sex crime"

Revenge porn is an online phenomenon where intimate photos and sex tapes are posted on the internet, without consent. In most cases, the photos are leaked by rejected exes looking for revenge. The photos are spread across the globe through porn sites and blogs, and the people in the photos are thus turned into involuntary “porn stars”. Ninety per cent of revenge porn victims are women. Since the first revenge porn website was established in 2010, the phenomenon has grown – also in Norway.

In the autumn of 2014, approximately 500 nude photos of 100 different female celebrities were leaked to the internet in a hacker attack on their iCloud accounts. The incident was named “The Fappening”, as in “The Happening” combined with “fapping”, internet slang for male masturbation, and “Celebgate” – a reference to the Watergate scandal.

Hollywood sweetheart Jennifer Lawrence (24) was hit hardest. Tens of photos showed the actress -- amongst other things -- naked in her bedroom with a glass of wine, exposing her breasts and genitals. Soon after the photo leak, she was interviewed by Vanity Fair magazine.

“It is not a scandal,” she told the reporter. “It is a sex crime”.

“Celebrities have always been subject to both involuntary and voluntary exposure,” says law professor Neil Richards (42) at Washington University School of Law, an internationally recognized expert in the fields of right to privacy and freedom of speech on the internet. Thanks to Jennifer Lawrence, he believes the problem finally received the attention it has long deserved.

“Normal people don't have the money to fix things or the ability to hold press conferences after nude photos of them are leaked on the internet,” says Richards. “The ordinary people are the ones we should be truly worried about.”

The Fappening followed by Snapchat leak

A few weeks after “The Fappening’s” photo leak rounds number two and three last autumn, 90,000 photos and 10,000 videos with sexual content were hacked and stolen from Snapsaved, the programme that allows Snapchat users to save photos and videos that otherwise delete themselves after a few seconds. Norwegian, Danish and US users were affected. Many were under the age of 18.

“The fact that intimate photos or videos are abused as a form of revenge by previous partners can be very challenging, and we know it is becoming increasingly common,” says Lena Reif (44), head of the sexual crimes unit in Kripos (National Criminal Investigation Service) in Norway. When cases like that are reported to the police, they are registered under general categories such as threats or blackmail, and it is therefore difficult to say exactly how many are affected by this here at home. The dark figures are most likely vast, as there is reason to believe that few people are willing to report this type of abuse to the police.

Assistant attorney Sara Eline Grønvold (30), author of the book “Barn og personvern” <'Children and privacy' – Trans.> (2014), believes the lack of reporting could possibly be caused by teenagers reluctant to tell their parents about the photos out of shame. Adults who are victims of revenge porn also fear that the photos will be spread more, and are embarrassed:

“Most victims just want the pictures taken down as quickly as possible. This way the photos won't attract any more attention,” says Grønvold.

US attorney Carrie Goldberg (37), who specializes in working with victims of revenge porn and is trying to “murder” the phenomenon, believes revenge porn is a “very effective way” to destroy someone’s life – without putting a lot of effort into it. Thanks to new tools such as smartphones, it has become easier to spread the photos to millions of people.

"They already have the photos and videos on their phone, and all they need to do is upload them to the internet,' she says by phone from New York."

“Then the rest happens automatically. The real torture is from everyone who contacts you.”

Struggle against depression and anxiety

The revenge porn is ‘optimal’ when as much information as possible about the person in the photos is published online, along with the images: Name, telephone number, address, links to Facebook and Twitter accounts, email, names of family members, school, workplace and in some cases, even personal identity numbers. Revenge porn victims have reported 50-60 friend requests a day, hundreds of strangers calling their cell phones and emails from people who threaten to send the nude photos to their employer or publish them on Facebook, if they don't receive more crude photos. Many victims speak of a life filled with anxiety, post-traumatic stress, insomnia, depression, fear and shame. In March 2013, a 13-year-old Swedish girl committed suicide after having been harassed by an adult man who threatened to spread nude photos of her online.

Yvonne from Oslo was 16 years old when she discovered that nude photos of her had been published online. Her social media accounts had been hacked, and the photos were published from her own profile.

“It felt like standing in a huge crowd, while someone took my clothes off without me being able to stop it,” says the young politician, who is now 20. More explicit nude photos of her were published on the world’s largest photo forum, with several million users, along with her name, address and telephone number. For the last four years, she has received sex toys in the mail, death threats and phone calls at all hours of the day and night from men from all over the world, from teenaged boys to family fathers, who want more photos, sexual favours, or just a “collective wank to a girl who doesn't want to be looked at”.

“All of my friends saw the nudes and thought that I published them myself,” says Yvonne, who doesn't want her last name on print. She says that the incident is still difficult, and triggers feelings of guilt and a bad conscience. When she went to the police and told them about the photos, she received a brochure about netiquette.

“It said: ‘Don’t take nude photos of yourself, and don’t talk to strangers on the internet’… Are you kidding me?”

She continues:

“No one understands or feels the consequences of taking nude photos of yourself more than a girl who is exposed on the internet. You take photos of everything else going on in your life, of course you’re going to use your phone to explore your sexuality. Taking a photo of yourself is like looking in the mirror – except the photos never disappear.”

Sexting advice to beat revenge porn

According to the US-based Pew Research Center, exchanging sexual photos, or “sexting”, is done by an increasing number of adults, couples and singles, to spice up their sex lives or flirt. To the great concern of many parents of teenagers, nude photos are also becoming an increasing part of sexual exploration among young people. The Norwegian Media Authority reports that the number of Norwegian children between the ages of 13 and 16 that have sent nude photos of themselves to someone else, has nearly doubled since 2010.

Hans Marius Tessem (37), general manager in SlettMeg.no (“Remove Me”), a Norwegian organisation that has existed since 2010 to provide advice and guidance for those who have experienced privacy violations online, says that more and more people are calling in to get help to remove sexually injurious photos that have been spread on the internet.

“Most of them are girls,” says Tessem.

“And most of the ones calling us regarding this issue are under the age of 18. They aren’t even old enough to be called women.” He emphasises that SlettMeg.no will never preach morals and tell people they should not take nude photos of themselves and send them to others. However, it is important that people are aware of the potential consequences, he says.

“One thing many people don’t know, is that sexual photos of people under the age of 18 are categorised as child pornography."

Sexual photos do not follow the sexual age of consent, and any sexual depiction of children under the age of 18 could be covered under the child pornography provision. In theory, this means that anyone who possesses or receives sexual photos of children under 18, can be prosecuted and convicted.

MyEx.com, which is believed to be the largest revenge porn site with photos of ten thousand people, calls itself an “adult entertainment website”. The site has posted that they have a zero tolerance policy for posting content including people under 18. For Norwegian Yvonne, who was 15 years old in the nude photos published on the internet, her young age became her "rescue":

“When I contacted the websites and said I was under 18 in the photos, they were removed immediately. In that way, you might be “lucky” if this happens with photos where you are underage."

Instead of telling children and young adults that it's wrong to take pictures of yourself, she believes that digital awareness should be included in an improved sexual education programme in the Norwegian school system:

“These days, the sex education stops in the analogue world. The digital world is not sufficiently covered and digitalised sexuality is not discussed.”

The most hated man on the internet: Hunter Moore

The phenomenon of non-consensual images has existed for a long time, but it wasn’t until 2010 that the term “revenge porn” was born. The website IsAnyOneUp.com was started in 2010 by American Hunter Moore (28), and was originally used to review night clubs. According to Moore himself, a self-appointed pro in destroying other people’s lives, he was in a sexual relationship with a girl “everyone wanted to see naked”. When he posted a nude photo of her, he supposedly received 14,000 visitors in one day. For two years, the website pumped out nude photos of women and men, often with links to their Facebook and Twitter pages. The photos were either hacked or submitted by vengeful exes, hence the name “revenge porn”.

When IsAnyOneUp.com was closed down in April 2012, Moore – dubbed "The Most Hated Man on the Internet” by Rolling Stone magazine – claimed that the website had 30 million views per month and was making USD 10,000 a month from advertising. In January 2014, he was arrested by the FBI, for paying people to hack into others’ accounts and stealing nude photos. Today, the “revenge porn king” has nearly half a million followers on Twitter. His followers call themselves #TheFamily, and consist of girls who want to sleep with him (“If you had AIDS I would still fuck you just so I could say you were the one who infected me”) and boys who want to be like him (“Hunter Moore is my hero”).

Photos shared in trust

Most of the revenge porn pictures all share an intimacy factor: These are photos that obviously have been taken or shared in trust, and that are intended for one person’s eyes only – not the public. The explanations for why a fellow human being deserves to be exposed on a revenge porn sites are many: “She always complained she was tired and didn’t want to have sex”, a user on MyEx.com comments on the five close-up images of his posing ex-wife in the bedroom, therefore: “she needs to be humiliated”. There are 20 intimate photos of a 23-year-old, which she took herself and sent to what now appears to be a bitter ex-boyfriend. The person has listed the woman’s address, full name and titled the photo gallery “Whore”, as “she broke up with me for no reason.” The majority of the people who post revenge porn photos are men.

“We're talking about men who feel affronted,” says the Norwegian psychologist Hedvig Montgomery (46):

“Perhaps the woman broke up with or cheated on him, in some way gave him the experience of losing – real or not. The affronted man then uses all the power at his disposal in an area where the woman is even more vulnerable, namely nudity and sexuality.”

University professor: "This is how you crush a woman"

The American university professor Annmarie Chiarini (44) was 40 years old when she googled her name and found herself on the porn site Xhamster.com.

“This is how you crush a woman in today’s society,” she says.

Her entire contact information was listed under the photos, as well as the university and campus where she was teaching.

“My ex told me he published the photos because he knew this was the way to damage my career and hurt me as much as possible,” says Chiarini, who also found a cd with 88 intimate photos of herself for sale on Ebay. The photos, which had been on the porn site for two weeks, had several thousand page views. “Hot for teacher?”, it said. “Well, come get it!"

One of her colleagues simply told her “As you make your bed, so you must lie in it”.

 “People gang up on the slut,” says Chiarini.

“Spreading non-consensual porn and harassing revenge porn victims online says alot about society's view on sex, and in particular – female sexuality,” she believes. Using sexual shame to hurt a woman is powerful, and the shame is amplified even further by the knowledge that the photos were in many cases taken by the woman herself, or that she allowed this to happen in an intimate situation.

“I blamed myself when it happened,” says Holly Jacobs (31).

Sexually explicit photos of her from a three-and-a-half-year long distance relationship were posted online when she was a doctoral student at Florida International University in Miami. Jacobs says that her friends and family seemed to think it was her own fault.

“You never blame the actual perpetrator, who violated a relationship of trust and uploaded them to the internet,” she says.

“It’s as if someone told you that they were raped, and then you reply: ‘Yeah, but what were you wearing, and how much did you have to drink?’”

In Jacobs' case, the spread was so massive and the following harassment so severe that she had to change her name. Nevertheless, the photos are still being posted, again and again. Since 2012, she has worked  together with Annmarie Chiarini to run the campaign End Revenge Porn and the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative in order to criminalize revenge porn. They are both at the forefront of a growing anti-revenge porn movement, and raise awareness around the growing problem by sharing their own stories.

“It’s kind of therapy for me to become an activist and fight against revenge porn, and to talk to other victims,” says Jacobs.

“It’s very comforting to know that you are not alone.”

"Psychopatic form of revenge"

The Danish revenge porn distributor “Erik” wished to remain anonymous when he was interviewed by the “Station 2” Danish crime show on Danish TV 2 in November, since no one in his circle knows what he is doing in his spare time.

He is also married and has an ordinary job.

“These are real photos of real people in real places, who are enjoying what they’re doing in the pictures,” responds the obscured male voice when asked what he finds appealing about revenge porn. He says he receives photos from all over the world, but he does not feel any form of guilt. After all, the photos of the girls are usually already online.

“This is what I’m so interested in:” says Emma Holten.

“Why don’t all these men find it uncomfortable?”

After writing the article "Samtykke" (Consent) about her personal experience of being subjected to revenge porn, published at Friktion.dk – the online magazine she is an editor of – Holten has become an important activist and voice for women’s rights and for combating revenge porn in Scandinavia. The article made a big splash in the media in the beginning of 2015, and will now be used in lower secondary schools in Denmark. She is interested in the social trends, she says: why are there so many “totally normal men who think women who are naked against their will on the internet, are so disgusting”, and “why do they want to contribute to ruining their lives?”

“Why do they think it is exciting? Why do they publish addresses, telephone numbers, family member names… and why do they contact me all the time?”

“Internet has opened up the dark side of humanity,” says the Canadian psychology professor Delroy L. Paulhus, at the University of Britsh Columbia, who published the study “Trolls just want to have fun” last year. He has conducted studies about revenge earlier.

“Men appear to have a more psychopathic form of revenge. They are more likely to seek revenge by doing something severe and short-lived, like publishing photos of a previous partner on the internet, and then they move on with their lives.”

The unknown hero: Adam Steinbaugh

Adam Steinbaugh (31) has become known as the anti-revenge porn movement’s “unknown hero”, and exposes the identity of the people behind websites that distribute revenge porn. “The majority of the people who run websites and blogs with revenge porn are men who you would never suspect are doing this,” says the former law student over the telephone from Los Angeles. Through his blog, he has helped root out the people behind websites such as Texxxan and YouGotPosted.com. He says that many of them are businessmen, with families and children, who make extra money from revenge porn, where those in the photos may pay several hundred dollars to have the photos removed as quickly as possible. Others are the more stereotypical long-haired men in their fifties or “kids without a job”, and as far as Steinbaugh knows, there is one woman who runs a revenge porn site. On her blog, women can ridicule their husband’s lovers, so-called “homewreckers”, by publishing photos, screenshots of conversations they found on their husband’s cell phone and the story of how they discovered the infidelity.

“What makes the internet ‘scary’, to use that terminology, is that the photos will never disappear if the content is explicit and thus interesting enough,” says assistant attorney Sara Eline Grønvold.

“You can get help from the police, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority or SlettMeg.no, but it doesn’t really help if the photos have already been posted, shared and downloaded by others.

Emma Holten taking back her body

In Copenhagen, Emma Holten closes her laptop and folds a couple of papers on the coffee table in front of her.

“This isn’t really about me,” she says.

“I’m just a product in the middle of all this. It’s my body, but it has nothing to do with me. The interesting question is: Why does it hurt so much? I’m not scared that people will see me naked. It’s not puritanism. That’s really not what this is about.”

Activism has meant a lot to her. The last few weeks, Holten has received international media attention for a photo project where she is "taking back" her own body. In these photos, Holten is naked in a normal daily setting, relaxed and smiling, and you can see just as much of her body as in the revenge porn photos.

The big difference however, is that the new photos were shared with her consent. “It’s the absence of consent which means that the other photos had a completely different meaning. You become an involuntary prostitute,” says Holten.

She calls herself extremely privileged, and says that the fact that she is young, white, lives in Copenhagen and comes from a culturally strong family makes a big difference.

“It means that people more easily identify with me. It is easier to have sympathy for someone who is articulate and educated – you simply ‘deserve’ to go through these things less,” says Holten.

“The situation would most likely be quite different if I was a young, dumb reality star.”

Escaped revenge porn

“I will destroy you.” That was the last thing Annmarie Chiarini’s ex said to her when she broke up with him. The university professor pauses on the telephone. She’s lucky, she says.

“I was able to get the photos removed very quickly. They don’t exist anymore, and they weren’t out there for long. For some people, the photos are uploaded time and time again. There’s no escape.”

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