Image-Based Sexual Abuse

Examining image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) as a multifaceted form of gendered violence in digital spaces, this book explores how technology exacerbates harm, coercion and victimisation through the non-consensual taking, making, sharing, and the threat of sharing of intimate images.Readers will gain a comprehensive understanding of IBSA through empirical evidence and feminist theoretical frameworks that reveal the continuities between offline and online sexual violence. Drawing on interviews with victim-survivors, data from the Revenge Porn Helpline, and analysis of IBSA platforms, the book exposes how misogynistic attitudes and technological developments intersect to intensify harm. It examines the devastating mental, physical, and social impacts on victims, critiques the systematic failures of criminal justice responses, and highlights the importance of community responses, particularly the work undertaken by the Revenge Porn Helpline and how victim resistance plays an important part in consciousness-raising and knowledge exchange.This book will be of value to students and scholars of criminology, particularly those in the fields of victimology, gender studies, cybercrime, internet governance, and violence against women. It will also appeal to activists, policymakers, victim-support practitioners, criminal justice professionals, and anyone who wishes to understand IBSA and gender-based violence in the digital age.