AUGUSTA, Maine — A Maine lawmaker is fighting for a new law to make so-called “revenge porn” illegal.
CBS 13 discovered thousands of websites with sexually explicit pictures and videos posted by former partners without their ex’s permission. Our research found 16 states now have specific laws addressing revenge porn. In six states, it’s a felony.
“The times and ways I’ve seen this most commonly used is when someone says, ‘If you leave me, I will do this to you.’ It’s not just humiliating, which it is, it also can impact employment and educational choices,” Julia Colpitts with the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence said.
Colpitts said anyone who thinks this isn’t happening in Maine is wrong.
“This is a huge problem and people who don’t understand that are living in a different era,” Colpitts said.
On just one website we found pages of intimate, explicit photos and mean, nasty captions featuring Maine victims their names and where they live now shared all over the world. A report from the End Revenge Porn campaign says there are at least 3,000 websites like this one. On some of them, the victim has to pay hundreds of dollars to have the pictures removed.
“Not a week goes by that I don’t see a case that involves revenge porn,” Lucia Hunt said.
Hunt works with domestic violence victims at Pine Tree Legal in Portland and said she’s noticed a sharp spike in revenge porn cases. But legally, she said, they’re challenging to fight in court.
“In Maine there’s no specific law that addresses revenge porn at this point,” Hunt said.
There could soon be one. House Republican Leader Ken Fredette is proposing a law to make it illegal to distribute pictures and videos of “another person in a state of nudity or engaged in a sexual act” if the person has not consented.
“We’d like to have some limitations on that so people can’t feel that they can harm someone by putting those kinds of pictures on the Internet,” Fredette said.
Critics in other states with revenge porn laws have argued they violate freedom of speech rights guaranteed in the First Amendment.
“There’s freedom under the constitution, people should have that liberty, but at the same time this is a reasonable limitation,” Fredette said.
CBS 13 got a first draft of the bill which would make this a Class D crime in Maine. That carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine.