Politicians are calling for urgent action after tens of thousands of pictures of Irish women were shared without consent this week.Getty Images

The online petition has seen renewed interest in recent days after tens of thousands of images of mainly Irish women and some minors had been shared online without consent. Politicians are now calling for urgent action.

The petition on Change.org, launched four months ago by a woman based in Ireland, says: “Image-based sexual abuse is still not a crime in Ireland. Image-based sexual abuse is a huge violation of privacy and is a continuum of revenge pornography, upskirting, cyber-flashing, and many more.

“Many women in Ireland are constantly targeted and disproportionately affected by this resulting in severe repercussions, leading in some cases to suicide. Girls affected by image-based sexual abuse are often also victims of severe cyber-bullying and job losses because of this. 

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"Women in Ireland live in constant fear of having their most private pictures released without consent and even being recorded unknowingly. Abusive partners will threaten women to stay with them or they will release their images causing them to stay trapped in abusive relationships. 

“I am publically asking the Irish government for the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Bill be signed into Irish law including that those guilty be added to the sex offenders register and face a criminal conviction which could see those convicted jailed for up to 7 years.

[The Bill, which was introduced by TD Brendan Howlin in 2017 and is currently in the committee phase, can be read in its entirety here.]

The petition then references the death of Dara Quigley in 2017: “Dara Quigley was detained under The Mental Health Act in 2017. CCTV footage of her walking naked and being detained was kept by the guards. A guard recorded the CCTV footage and sent them over WhatsApp where it was shared over 125,000 times. Days later Dara took her own life. The garda accused of sharing the footage did not face criminal charges and Dara deserves justice.”

On November 19, Aileen Quigley, Dara's mother, again called for image-based sexual abuse to be made a crime in Ireland:

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The online petition has seen renewed interest in recent days after reports that images of women, some of minors, were shared online without consent this week.

On November 17, Victims Alliance Ireland, which describes itself as "an organisation designed to give collective voice to anybody who has been victimised by another person or a system," confirmed the massive sharing of the images and called for volunteers to help assess the situation.

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The following day, Linda Hayden, the founder of The Victims Alliance, said the Discord server where the images were being shared without consent had been taken down.

Hayden told The Irish Examiner: “We at the Victims Alliance, through our head of image-based abuse Megan Sims, became aware of an issue where people are using internet forums to share images, some intimate, some not, into mega files.

"The one common theme is that the victims are unaware that their images are being used in this way,.

“We even have examples where people have sent these images to members of the victim’s families. To give the context of the size of the issue, some of these files have 11,000 images in them, most have between 5,000 and 6,000. We have seen dozens of these files.” 

Hayden said the images being shared without consent had been taken from various platforms including Only Fans, Tinder, WhatsApp, and Instagram. A large number are also taken without knowledge or consent in changing rooms or while women are sleeping.

Hayden, who said the files she and her team encountered pertain mostly to Irish women, said that the victims "have had their consent and body autonomy removed, they have been degraded and they are fearful of who has seen these images, what they are using them for and if this will affect their work, personal and family life.” 

A spokesperson for Discord told The Journal that as soon as the website “became aware of this server, we permanently deleted it” and “identified and banned the approximately 500 users involved."

The spokesperson said Discord “will cooperate on this matter with Irish authorities subject to applicable law." 

“No one should have to endure the pain of having private images posted online without their consent," the spokesperson said, adding that “Discord has a zero-tolerance approach to nonconsensual pornography and child sexual abuse material, and we work aggressively and proactively to keep it off of our service."

On November 19, the Alliance said it was happy to step aside as gardai continue to investigate the matter:

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Several politicians raised the issue of "image-based sexual abuse" and pressed for immediate action in the Dáil on November 19: 

The Women's Council of Ireland has shared these resources if you believe your pictures have been shared without consent: