Sexual Violence in the Digital Age: Replicating and Augmenting Harm, Victimhood and Blame
| Author | Rachel Killean,Anne-Marie McAlinden,Eithne Dowds |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639221086592 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Sexual Violence in the
Digital Age: Replicating and
Augmenting Harm,
Victimhood and Blame
Rachel Killean
School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Anne-Marie McAlinden
School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Eithne Dowds
School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Abstract
This article examines some of the complexities and tensions which lie at the intersection
of popular and official constructions of technology-assisted sexual violence (TA-SV). It
argues that many of the core contextual understandings of victimhood and harm
which underpin the cultural and legal framing of offline forms of sexual violence are
not only reproduced but augmented in virtual settings. Drawing on debates from critical
victimology, the article argues that TA-SV amplifies traditional understandings of ‘victim’
and ‘offender’behaviours concerning sexual crime. In so doing, it highlights the particu-
lar challenges around: a) the ‘ideal victim’; (b) responsibilisation and blame; and c) victim-
offender-bystander continuums which emerge not only within discourses on TA-SV, but
also through the use of digital evidence at trial. The article concludes by examining the
broader implications for academic discourses on victimhood and the challenges for legal
and cultural discourses in responding to sexual violence in the digital age.
Keywords
technology-assisted sexual violence, digital age, victimhood, harm, blame, digital evidence
Corresponding author:
Rachel Killean, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, Main Site Tower, University Road,
Belfast, UK.
Email: Rachel.killean@qub.ac.uk
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2022, Vol. 31(6) 871–892
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/09646639221086592
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Introduction
Digital sociologists and criminologists have noted that we are living in the ‘digital
society’(Stratton et al., 2017) or ‘information age’(Castells, 1996). This has been char-
acterised by the prolific use of new media and mobile technologies, and the last two
decades have seen the internet and ‘smartphones’become ubiquitous to our everyday
commercial and social activities.
1
As Grabosky (2001: 243) has long contended, ‘[i]t
has become trite to suggest that the convergence of computing and communications
has begun to change the way we live, and the way we commit crime.’The internet has
enabled a broad range of what Wood (2021) terms ‘instrumental technicity harms’
where technologies are used as a means to harm beyond their intended use. This includes
fraud and identity theft, phishing and malware and terrorism, as well as forms of sexual
harassment, exploitation, and abuse. New forms of what have been collectively termed
‘technology-assisted sexual violence’(TA-SV) (Bluett-Boyed et al., 2013) against both
adults and children have emerged and been captured within existing or new legislation
in the United Kingdom. This includes, for example, criminal offences known colloquially
as ‘grooming’
2
(McAlinden, 2012), ‘sextortion’
3
(Wolak et al., 2018), ‘revenge pornog-
raphy’
4
(Hall and Hearn, 2017), ‘upskirting’
5
(Thompson, 2020) and ‘cyberflashing’
6
(McGlynn and Johnson, 2021) as part of the official recognition of ‘image-based
sexual abuse’(McGlynn and Rackley, 2017) as well as technology-assisted ‘coercive
control’
7
(Dragiewicz et al., 2018). The burgeoning role of technology within sexual vio-
lence is evidenced most acutely perhaps in relation to peer-to-peer forms of abuse via
‘sexting’
8
and several high-profile cases of the filming and distribution of rape or
sexual assault among teens (Agnew, 2021; McAlinden, 2018).
9
The significance of the broader term ‘sexual violence’is that it acknowledges non-
contact forms of abuse which, while they may not result in physical injury or indeed
be formally recognised within the law, nonetheless entail longer-term psychological
harms for victims
10
and as such represent both a psychosocial and structural problem
(McGlynn et al., 2020; Powell and Henry, 2017). On the one hand, as Grabosky
(2001) appeared to suggest in relation to ‘virtual criminality’more generally, TA-SV
is in many senses a newer manifestation of sexual crime committed in a different way.
On the other hand, as this article asserts, it remains subject to many of the same ideo-
logical assumptions relating to victims and perpetrators of non-digital sexual violence
including perceptions of ‘harm’and ‘blame.’
Within the domain of sexual violence, the advent of the technological era has
increased the vulnerability of potential victims and opened up new opportunities for
offending, while simultaneously shaping cultural norms around sexual behaviour. The
faceless nature of virtual communication is said to have a performative, disinhibiting
effect, completely altering the nature of social and personal interaction, and distorting
social norms and boundaries around ‘appropriate’and ‘harmful’sexual behaviour in
digital spaces (Agnew and McAlinden, 2021; McAlinden, 2018). This accords with
Wood’s (2021) notion of ‘generative technicity harms’where technology becomes con-
ducive of harmful ends. However, there may also be a high-degree of cross-over of sexual
behaviours and norms between online and offline settings (McAlinden, 2018). As dis-
cussed further, even within trials for ‘offline’forms of sexual offending, such as rape
872 Social & Legal Studies 31(6)
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