No Vengeance for 'Revenge Porn' Victims: Unraveling Why this Latest Female-Centric, Intimate-Partner Offense is Still Legal, and Why We Should Criminalize It

d. Problems with Criminal Statutes Currently Available to Revenge Porn Victims One of the problems with currently available statutes prohibiting cyberharassment, blackmail, and hacking is their lack of enforceability. (230) Even though victims may be able to recover through one of the current remedies, police are not always aware of how they apply. (231) This may lead officers to tell women to wait until a crime occurs offline: (232) [T]he trivialization of cyber gender harassment has an unfortunate consequence: the underenforcement of criminal law. Targeted individuals often refrain from reporting cyberharassment to authorities, fearing it will not be taken seriously. Law-enforcement agencies refuse to pursue cyberharassment complaints on the grounds that the conduct is legally insignificant, in much the same way that prosecutors once refused to file charges in cases involving gender-specific sexual assaults such as domestic violence and rape. Law's underenforcement may be due to the absence of training about cyberharassment. (233) This lack of education for police officers about current cyber-harm statutes (which may not apply to many victims), (234) compounded with the difficulty of finding an anonymous user without a website's help, gives victims little hope that anyone will be held responsible for their harm. (235) 3. Criminal Laws Directly Addressing the Problem of Revenge Porn To date, six states have adopted anti-revenge porn legislation, but they generally fall into two categories of statutes: ones that follow the New Jersey model and ones that follow the California model. (236) New Jersey and California were the first two states with statutes prosecutors could utilize to combat revenge porn, but each state differs significantly in its statutory requirements. (237) Florida has already considered a revenge porn bill, but it failed to pass. (238) Internationally, France criminalized "taking, recording or transmitting the picture of a person who is within a private place, without the consent of the person concerned," (239) and in 2014, Israel banned online distribution of sexual pictures or videos without the subjects' consent, which carries a sentence of up to five years in prison. (240) a. New Jersey Model New Jersey was the first state to enact a statute that allowed for the criminal prosecution of revenge porn distributors, although this was probably not the original purpose of the statute when it was passed a decade ago. (241) The relevant portion of the statute criminalizes disclosure of a "photograph, film, videotape, recording, or any other reproduction of the image of another person whose intimate parts are exposed or who is engaged in an act of sexual penetration or sexual contact, unless that person has consented to such disclosure. " (242) New Jersey divides crimes by degrees, ranging from first to fourth instead of misdemeanors and felonies. (243) The non-consensual disclosure of sexual photographs or videos in New Jersey is a crime in the third degree, (244) punishable for up to five years in prison or a $30,000 fine, which is comparable to a felony in other states. (245) The New Jersey State Senate Committee, which passed the legislation, focused on the non-consensual recording and observation aspects of the statute, (246) rather than the non-consensual disclosure. (247) The legislative history illustrates the state senate committee's recognition of individuals' right to privacy over these private moments. (248) The committee noted, "[t]his [bill] recognizes that people have a right to control the observation of their most intimate behavior under circumstances where a reasonable person would not expect to be observed. " (249) A major advantage of the New Jersey statute over other revenge porn statutes is it lacks the "intent to harass" requirement that other state and federal statutes mandate. …