Mother of harassment victim who died calls for stronger online laws

The mother of a woman who died shortly after CCTV images of her naked on a Dublin street were widely shared has called for stronger online harassment laws.

In April 2017 journalist Dara Quigley was arrested as she walked naked down a street in what her family previously described as a psychotic episode.

CCTV images of the incident, which were in possession of An Garda Síochána, were shared an estimated 125,000 times. Ms Quigley died within days of the images being shared. An inquest into her death has yet to be held.

No person or organisation has been held accountable for the circulation of the CCTV footage.

Today the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) will appear before the Oireachtas Justice Committee to discuss the issue of online harassment, harmful communications and related offences, and will cite Ms Quigley’s case as evidence that stronger legislation is needed.

In a statement Aileen Malone, Dara’s mother, said: "Dara used the power of social media but was also damaged through it. She believed in the power of free speech and the democratic process. It is right that her voice - through this submission by the ICCL - is being heard.

"Strong legislation is needed in the area of online harassment and abuse to deter and to punish. It is needed urgently to protect all vulnerable people, their families and friends, and to reduce the cruel behaviour of a minority that can be shared and spread rapidly online causing widespread hurt and devastating consequences.

“We, Dara’s family, thank the ICCL for making a strong and relevant submission to the Committee for Justice and Equality and for standing up for Dara,” the statement concludes.

In a written submission to the Committee, the ICCL has called for an amendment to the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act (NFOAPA) to outlaw the creation and/or sharing of private sexual images without consent.

The ICCL said that while NFOAPA covers harassment, its language is not always directly transferable to cases of online harassment.

The group said: “The requirement that harassment consist of ‘persistently following, watching, pestering, besetting or communicating’ means the prosecution has to prove a pattern of harassment. This opens a lacuna in the law whereby individual acts of harassment can’t be prosecuted effectively.

“The absence of effective laws criminalising online harassment means the perpetrators often go unpunished and victims are left without protection or justice,” it warned.

Elizabeth Farries, information rights programme manager at ICCL, will today repeat ICCL's calls for legislation on image-based sexual abuse.

"ICCL qualitative investigations showed that most victims of image-based sexual abuse are women and most perpetrators are men. Online harassment amplifies inequalities we see offline, so women, LGBTI people, the Traveller community, and people of colour, amongst others, are all impacted much more by this problem," Ms Farries said.

In its submission to the Committee, the ICCL said it takes issue with the term ‘revenge porn’.

“This isn’t pornography, it’s abuse. It is therefore better to describe these categories of offences as ‘image-based sexual abuse’ to describe non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images,” the ICCL submission states.

The Committee recently heard submissions from Facebook, Google, and Twitter on the same topic. All three organisations rejected suggestions they should be held to the same standards as media publishers and broadcasters in moderating online content.

This story was amended