"The cold penetrating gaze of the camera lens is, in effect, like a double rape." Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence: Legislative and Judicial Responses to this "Pernicious New Habit"
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL DISSERTATION
My name is Lily Marilyn Wildman, I am 23 years old and I am from Keighley in West Yorkshire. I am a Durham Law School graduate (2020) currently undertaking the Barrister Training Course in Leeds. I chose to write my dissertation on the topic of perpetrators’ using their digital devices to record rape and sexual assaults. This was primarily in order to portray the importance of this subject-matter. When researching the topic of my dissertation, I found that, comparatively, there was a lack of literature on the technological recording of rape and sexual assaults. Additionally, I wanted to research this topic from a victim-survivor’s perspective and focus on the additional harm that results from the attack being digitally recorded. I learnt that this is an area of the law that is taken into account at the sentencing stage of the offence, however I was advocating for it to become its own specific offence for the additional harm it causes to the victim and the difficulties associated with prosecuting sexual abuse cases in the first instance. With a view to the future, I hope that this is an area of the law that continues to gain traction. I would be delighted to contribute to this discourse in any way that I can, and I hope that this dissertation contributes to this significant topic.
- Lily Wildman, Author
Introduction
In January 2020, a serial rapist was found guilty of 159 counts of sexual assault across four separate trials. The victims were identified by video footage recorded by the perpetrator during the abuse. Reporting on the conviction, the North West Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor, Ian Rushton, describes how the perpetrator ‘derived further twisted pleasure’ from re-watching the footage, which amounts to 330 DVDs worth. During the trial, the jury were offered psychological support after watching the digital recordings which detailed the unconscious victims being raped for hours. Despite the successful prosecution for the rape and sexual assault, no separate charge was libelled to account for the digital recording of the sexual abuse, nor the possession of such recordings on the perpetrators’ mobile device. This digital recording of sexual abuse will be the focus of this dissertation, arguing that there is a lacuna in criminal legislation, which needs to be accounted for.
