Men Who Send Penis Photos To Ladies To Face Two-Year Jail Term

Men who take part in cyber-flashing by sending nude photos to strangers will face a two-year jail term following the new law in England and Wales. 

Currently, there is no law in England and Wales that directly addresses cyberware despite the fact that this law was declared illegal in Scotland about 12 years ago.

However, to reflect punishment for indecent public display, cyber-flashing must be included in the Sexual Offenses Act of 2003.

Cyber-flashing is when a person is sent an unsolicited sexual image on their mobile device by an unknown person nearby through social media, messages, or other sharing functions such as Airdrop.

With the new development, it will be an offense for someone to expose themselves with the intention of causing 'alarm or distress'.

The new proposal comes after researchers warned that a lack of thorough accountability and identity-checking measures are helping to fuel the online sexual harassment of young people.

Ministers had contemplated adding cyber-flashing to the Online Safety Bill, a draft legislation announced last week which will force web giants to protect users by cracking down on illegal activity taking place on their platforms.

But the government will now use another, more minor, piece of legislation due to concerns over getting the Online Safety Bill written into law this year, reports The Times.

It is understood that a cyber-flasher could still be found guilty if they send a picture of someone else's genitals.

According to Mail Online, the UCL Institute of Education released a report in December 2021 and found that non-consensual image-sharing practices were 'particularly pervasive, and consequently normalised and accepted' - contributing to 'shockingly low' rates of reporting online sexual abuse. 

Researchers quizzed 144 boys and girls aged from 12 to 18 in focus groups, and a further 336 in a survey about digital image-sharing. Thirty-seven percent of the 122 girls surveyed had received an unwanted sexual picture or video online.

Three in four of the girls in the focus groups had also been sent an explicit photo of male genitals, with the majority of these 'not asked for'.

Snapchat was the most common platform used for image-based sexual harassment, according to the survey findings. But reporting on Snapchat was deemed 'useless' by young people because the images were automatically deleted. 

And research by YouGov last year found that four in ten millennial women have been sent a picture of a man's genitals without consent, while data by Bumble suggested that this figure could be even higher.

Findings from the dating website revealed that 48 percent of those aged 18 to 24 have received an unsolicited sexual photograph in the last year alone.

Bumble found that women are disproportionally recipients of the explicit photographs, which are sent on social media, messaging apps, Bluetooth, AirDrop, and WiFi.

The dating app began cross-party Parliamentary consultations on November 2 alongside UN Women UK and the United Nations' gender equality arm.