‘Young People Just Resolve It in Their Own Group’: Young People’s Perspectives on Responses to Non-Consensual Intimate Image Distribution
| Author | Alexa Dodge,Emily Lockhart |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14732254211030570 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14732254211030570
Youth Justice
2022, Vol. 22(3) 304 –319
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14732254211030570
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‘Young People Just Resolve It in
Their Own Group’: Young People’s
Perspectives on Responses to
Non-Consensual Intimate Image
Distribution
Alexa Dodge and Emily Lockhart
Abstract
While responses to non-consensual intimate image distribution (NCIID) often highlight criminal law
remedies, little is known about how young people are choosing to respond to this act and whether they
perceive legal intervention as a useful tool. Drawing from interviews with 10 teenagers and survey responses
from 81 adult supporters, we provide insight into how young people perceive the supports available to them
for responding to NCIID. We find young people may avoid seeking support from both the criminal justice
system and adults in general due to fears of adult overreaction, victim blaming and shaming, and self/peer
criminalization.
Keywords
criminal law, education, non-consensual intimate image distribution, non-consensual pornography,
restorative justice, revenge porn, youth justice
Introduction
The act of distributing nude or sexually explicit images without consent – often collo-
quially referred to as ‘revenge porn’ or ‘non-consensual pornography’ – has become an
issue of popular concern and the product of frequent news headlines internationally
(Buiten, 2020; Powell and Henry, 2017). Over the past decade, this act has increasingly
attracted widespread social concern as a result of a number of reported cases in which
victims experienced – sometimes severe – psychological harms, reputational harms
(based on sex-negative cultural beliefs about sexual exposure), economic harms and/or
harms related to their exposed image being used as fodder for bullying and harassment
Corresponding author:
Alexa Dodge, Department of Political Science (Law, Justice, & Society), Dalhousie University, 6299 South Street, Halifax,
NS B3H 4R2, Canada.
Email: Alexa.dodge@dal.ca
1030570YJJ0010.1177/14732254211030570Youth JusticeDodge and Lockhart
research-article2021
Original Article
Dodge and Lockhart 305
(Powell and Henry, 2017; Dodge, 2021b). Much of the public outcry, activism and gov-
ernment response to non-consensual intimate image distribution (NCIID)1 has centred
on calls to criminalize this act (Citron and Franks, 2014; Hill, 2015; Kitchen, 2015).
These calls for a criminal justice response have resulted in the creation of specific
criminal offences for NCIID in jurisdictions such as Canada, parts of the United States,
the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Israel, Australia and Japan (Crofts and Kirchengast,
2019; Powell and Henry, 2017).
While criminalization will likely help to denounce and deter this act to some extent and
offer a portion of victims the recourse they seek (Citron and Franks, 2014; Hill, 2015;
Kitchen, 2015), a cohort of NCIID scholars have argued that criminal law is limited in its
ability to support the needs of many victims and may be particularly ineffective in meet-
ing the needs of young people (Powell and Henry, 2017; Shariff and DeMartini, 2015;
Dodge and Spencer, 2018). While calls to criminalize this act often spotlight cases involv-
ing young people – specifically those cases with the most tragic outcomes2 – little research
has been done to assess how young people are choosing to respond to this act in practice
and whether they perceive legal intervention as a useful tool. Based on interviews with 10
teenagers and open-ended survey responses from 81 adults who work closely with teens,
in this article we provide insight into how young people perceive the supports available to
them for responding to NCIID. We find that young people may avoid seeking support
from both the criminal justice system and adults in general due to: feeling that most cases
can be dealt with by young people at the peer level and that adults will ‘overreact’; con-
cerns that adults will engage in victim blaming and shaming; and concerns that victims or
perpetrators will be criminalized.
This article is composed of four sections. We begin with an overview of research by
feminist and restorative justice scholars on the limits of criminal responses to NCIID
among young people. In the second section, we provide the methodology for our inter-
views and survey data. In the third section, we discuss our findings regarding young peo-
ple’s perspectives on responses to NCIID. Based on our research findings, in the final
section, we argue that it is necessary to make non-criminal supports widely available to
young people and to ensure that supports are provided in a non-judgemental manner that
challenges common victim blaming and shaming narratives. Young people have been
largely excluded from the social processes through which knowledge about them is pro-
duced (Best, 2007); we argue that understanding young people’s perspectives on criminal
responses to NCIID will allow for the development of resources that they are more likely
to engage with and that are more responsive to their stated needs.
Criminal and Alternative Responses to NCIID Among Young
People
Emerging research finds that criminal justice responses may fail to address both the most
pressing needs of young NCIID victims and the root causes of this act among young peo-
ple (e.g. lack of knowledge regarding sexual consent, sexual rumour spreading practices,
sexist bonding practices, and the normalization of sexist, sex negative and gender-norm
enforcing bullying; Bailey, 2014; Coburn et al., 2015; Crofts and Lievens, 2018; Shariff
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