An anonymous revenge porn website is dedicating threads to Canadian universities students including York University, according to their community newspaper, the Excalibur.
The Excalibur described the website as an image-hosting site where intimate images and videos of mostly women are uploaded without their consent.
The Charlatan has withheld the website’s name to avoid further publicity.
David Ariza, a third-year journalism student at Carleton University, said he researched the issue of revenge porn last year for a class assignment.
He said when he started this project, he found out about the website in question that was spreading revenge porn of girls both of age and under-age without their consent.
“We failed as a society to stop this,” Ariza said.
The website works in threads dedicated to different cities across Canada with specific threads dedicated to cities including Ottawa, he explained.
Within Ottawa’s thread, there are sub-threads dedicated to students at Carleton, the University of Ottawa, Algonquin College and high school students, he added.
When Ariza found out about the website, he said he went to the Ottawa police to report it.
“They told me they couldn’t do anything about it because they didn’t have any proof that these girls did not want to be on this website. That said though, everybody knows that it’s a lie. No girl would consent to have her nudes spread behind her back,” Ariza explained. “Nobody can do anything about it.”
Brian Billings, acting director in the Department of University Safety at Carleton, said in an email that there are numerous options students can pursue if they believe they have been the victim of a revenge porn site.
“If an individual were to report being a victim of a revenge porn posting on a website, s/he would have several options available to them—either internally through University policy (such as the Sexual Violence Policy and the Student Rights and Responsibilities Policy) or externally through criminal charges . . . all of which would be facilitated by filing a report with the Department of University Safety,” he said.
Billings added that Carleton has a Sexual Violence Policy similar to York University’s. Since the start of the year, the provincial government made it mandatory for all Ontario colleges and universities to have these policies in place.
Ariza said he was devastated and concerned that the website, as of publication, is still up and thousands of pictures are still being shared behind victims’ backs.
He said he wanted to warn girls, so he added as many people on Facebook as he could and wrote a big post telling girls who feel their photos might have been shared to send him a message.
He said one girl got back to him and told him her friend was a victim but did not want to report it because of the threat of possible damage to her reputation.
But, Amina Fawzy, a third-year Carleton psychology student, said there are worse things happening around the world and said she doesn’t think “it is that big of an issue.”
“It’s unfair obviously because no one would want to experience that. However, I feel like [the person] should’ve at least thought about the bad things that could happen. Even if she knew the guy, she has to be 100 per cent sure he wouldn’t do that even if they broke up,” Fawzy said.
“It is the girl’s decision if they want to share intimate pictures with the other party, they just have to know they are taking a risk,” she added.
Photo by Meagan Casalino
