Cases of tech-enabled sexual violence trebled in last 4 years: Aware

• Cases of tech-enabled sexual violence seen by advocacy group Aware tripled from 2016 to 2019
• These include explicit messages and calls, and distribution of sexual content without consent
• In most cases, victims knew the perpetrators
• Some of the abuse later took place offline
• Aware said the upward trend would likely continue 

SINGAPORE — In the last four years, the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) has seen a tripling of sexual violence cases facilitated by technology. 

The gender equality advocacy group defines such cases as those where unwanted sexual behaviours are carried out via digital technology such as cameras, social media and messaging platforms.

In a statement on Wednesday (Nov 2), Aware said that its sexual assault care centre recorded 140 cases of technology-facilitated sexual violence last year. This formed 18 per cent of the 777 sexual violence cases it saw last year.

In 2016, the centre registered 47 cases of technology-enabled sexual violence. In 2017, it received 88 cases. In 2018, there were 118 such cases.

Such incidents included unwanted and explicit sexual messages and calls, as well as various types of image-based sexual abuse, which refers to obtaining, creating or distributing sexual images or videos of another person without consent.

Examples of this include the distribution of “revenge porn”, which is typically posted by former sexual partners to distress and embarrass victims, sexual voyeurism and threats to perform these acts.

WHY IT MATTERS

Based on the Aware sexual assault care centre’s experience in helping victims, its staff members have observed an emotional, mental and physical toll linked to a loss of dignity, privacy and sexual autonomy.

Exacerbating this is the victims’ limited ability to control the spread of images and videos once they are distributed online.

Victims also find it difficult to get in touch with online platforms to take down these materials. Perpetrators are thus seldom held accountable, Aware said.

Ms Shailey Hingorani, Aware’s advocacy and research head, said: “For the sake of a perpetrator’s momentary pleasure or spite, a survivor may live with anxiety for the rest of her life, knowing that her images are being disseminated online to countless strangers.”

TYPES OF CASES

The technology-enabled sexual violence cases that Aware saw last year include:

• Image-based sexual abuse (39 per cent)

• Unwanted and explicit sexual messages and calls (29 per cent)

• Sexual abuse facilitated by dating or ride-hailing mobile applications (15 per cent)

• Cases involving multiple forms of abuse (17 per cent)

In most cases, the victims knew the perpetrators. They were: 

• Acquaintances (20 per cent of the cases)

• Former intimate partners (18.6 per cent)

• Current intimate partners (10 per cent) 

In cases of unwanted or explicit sexual messages, the perpetrator was most often someone the victim knew from the workplace — making up 32.5 per cent of such cases.

FROM ONLINE TO OFFLINE ABUSE

In some cases, the abuse can also happen offline in the form of sexual harassment, rape, sexual assault, stalking, public humiliation or intimidation.

For instance, technology would sometimes play the role of connecting perpetrators to victims, such as through dating or ride-hailing apps.

In other cases, perpetrators would obtain images of their victims without consent, then blackmail the victims into having sex.

Aware said that last year, 50 — or 36 per cent — of technology-enabled sexual violence cases resulted in offline abuse. Thirty cases (21 per cent) involved both online and offline abuse.

Ms Hingorani said that the upward trend was likely to continue.

“For many, the incidents no longer shock,” she said.

“When it comes to image-based sexual abuse, we even know that men explicitly encourage each other to commit these acts over and over. So it is entirely unsurprising to see our case numbers go up.”