Fri, 17 Mar 2023
As a practitioner in both personal injury and family law, I am well versed at seeing both financial awards for psychiatric damage and the impact of ‘revenge porn’ on family dynamics. However to have both combined into one factual matrix, comfortably straddling my two practice areas, is something quite unique.
Last week, the Court gave a landmark decision in the case of FGX v Gaunt, where Mrs Justice Thornton awarded the unnamed woman general damages of £60,000 and special damages of £37,041.61 for consequential financial losses.
The case arose when the Claimant discovered that she had been covertly recorded by her partner, Stuart Gaunt, using hidden cameras in the bathroom. She further discovered that he had uploaded the images onto a pornographic website along with a photo of her face.
Mrs Justice Thornton made several findings in the case including that:
- the Claimant and Gaunt were in a ‘personal and intimate’ relationship;
- the images, though not of sexual activity, were ‘intimate’;
- the likelihood of the images ‘having been replicated elsewhere’ was high, stating, ‘it would be rare for there to be less than 20 images to view’;
- the defendant obtained payment for uploading the images.
Stuart Gaunt had previously been convicted for sexual offences including voyeurism in 2020 and was sentenced to a 2-year suspended sentence and a requirement to sign the sex offenders register for a period of 10 years.
Turning to the case at hand, the claim arose due to the psychological impact of Gaunt’s actions on the Claimant. The Claimant suffered from chronic PTSD and is considered ‘one of a minority of cases in which PTSD becomes chronic over several years, causing an enduring personality change’ . The Claimant was awarded monies for her psychiatric condition.
Interesting points of discussion arose from this case. They can be surmised as:
- The impact of this case being synonymous with a case of rape; and
- The appropriate language to utilise when involved in discussion of a case such as this.
The impact of this case being synonymous with a case of rape
The damages in this case were ‘on a par’ with what one would expect to see from a rape case and that is due to the consequences being the same in so far as the Claimant has suffered PTSD and a long-term personality change as a result of this sexual offence.
The Judge accepted the ‘impacts on the claimant are akin to the impacts of sexual assault… albeit that the abuse… is image-based rather than physical’.
This in itself is a huge victory for those who fall victim to these crimes; the longstanding psychiatric impact that these crimes have on its victims is being publicly recognised. It also goes to show that one does not have to be physically touched or physically harmed in order to suffer extensive psychiatric injury, therefore validating the feelings that many victims of online sexual abuse face.
The appropriate language to utilise when discussing a case such as this
Mrs Justice Thornton criticised the term ‘revenge porn’, saying it ‘conveys the impression that a victim somehow deserved what happened to them.’ Mrs Justice Thornton went on to say that ‘the description suggested by counsel for the Claimant and used in this judgment, is “image-based abuse”.
When assessing the social impact of these crimes, it is important to use the correct and fairest terminology and I go so far as to say that the term ‘revenge porn’ should cease to exist. In the Gaunt case, Counsel for the Claimant commented that ‘revenge’ implies a victim has done something wrong and the perpetrator is acting as a result of the victim’s actions and acting in retaliation. It is also the only offence that includes the word ‘revenge’. One should err on the side of caution in utilising this word as, by its very nature, it apportions some level of blame to the victim.
Alternative descriptions of the same offence could include image-based abuse, (as recommended in the Gaunt case), internet-based crime or non-consensual pornography.
One must also bear in mind that this legislation is recent, having only been passed in 2015. Section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 states the following:
It is an offence for a person to disclose a private sexual photograph or film if the disclosure is made—
(a)without the consent of an individual who appears in the photograph or film, and
(b)with the intention of causing that individual distress.
Nowhere in this statute does it allude to the complainant or victim contributing to the commission of this offence, so why does our colloquial description of this offence? The answer, it shouldn’t.
