Treat online abuse of women and girls as robustly as offline, authorities urged. Call on police and prosecutors by women's group EVAW comes as report reveals extent of sexual harassment on social media...
The Labour MP Stella Creasy, who has been subject to online abuse.
A report on Thursday reveals the extent of sexual harassment on social media sites such as Twitter. Holly Dustin, director of End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) said "Rape threats should be treated with the same seriousness as if they happened in the street or on the bus. They need to treat abuse online in the same way as they do offline". The raise of concern was a call from two people who were charged with improper use of a communications network on allegations of abusive tweets to Caroline Criado-Perez this summer. The campaigner, who led calls for Jane Austen's portrait to be featured on a banknote, said the experience of abuse had left her "emotionally and psychologically scarred", scared to open email or look at her mentions on Twitter. She is also to make an official complaint about the Crown Prosecution Service's handling of the case after it released details of the charges to the press before alerting her to the abuse. Speaking to the Guardian, she said the CPS did not seem to realise that any renewed interest in the case could trigger more abuse online. The Labour MP Stella Creasy, who has also been subject to abuse online, tweeted her outrage over the lack of notice. The End Violence Against Women Coalition published a report in association with the Gaurdian after a round table of 20 lawyers, academics, support workers and journalists to discuss the issues of the online abuse of women. The discussion ranged from rape threats sent to high-profile women such as Professor Mary Beard to sexist bullying and harassment of teenagers on sites such as ask.fm and Facebook to the distribution of pornography through web chatrooms and messaging.
She added: "This abuse is real and threatening, and is circulated and duplicated far more quickly because of new technology. The government and the companies who provide those spaces have responsibility to prevent this. The police and prosecution must urgently respond to abuse online, and we must ensure that schools talk to young people about these issues, as well as ensuring specialist support for survivors."
- Demands that the government places an obligation on all schools to teach respectful and consensual relationships.- Department for Culture, Media and Sport to set up an advisory group on sexism in the media.
- Campaigns on "everydaysexism" and against sexism and racism in music videos at the same time as "creating a new space for the same old abuse".
I think abuse is wrong overall in any way even if its online or offline. Woman do get targeted more than males in my point of view as they are easier targets especially at such a young age on social networking sites. Moreover the media today portrays many negative representation of women such as hip hop music videos where women are established in a very revealing and sexual way, making the opposite sex to think all women could be like that. The police should certainly react to this issue even if it is online as it could effect people, it is not a difference to offline abuse as everyone should be treated right.
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