Sheffield woman’s ‘nightmare’ after deepfake porn images of her are posted online

A Sheffield woman has said she still has ‘nightmares’ of fake porn images of her which were posted online.
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Writer and poet Helen Mort is now calling for a change in the law over ‘deepfake’ pornography where website users are invited to merge people’s faces onto explicit and violent sexual images.

Last year, she discovered that non-sexual images of her had been uploaded to a porn website.

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Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live's Mobeen Azhar, Helen said she wanted to see the creation and distribution of these images made an offence and how their publication was still causing her nightmares.

Helen Mort is calling for a change in the law after non-sexual images of her were turned into porn fakes online.Helen Mort is calling for a change in the law after non-sexual images of her were turned into porn fakes online.
Helen Mort is calling for a change in the law after non-sexual images of her were turned into porn fakes online.

"This is a crime which in many cases is going on invisibly," she said. "Those images of me had been out there for years and I didn't know about them, and I'm still having nightmares about some of them now. It's an incredibly serious form of abuse."

The original photos were taken from her social media and included holiday pictures and photos from her pregnancy. She was alerted to them by an acquaintance.

She said although some of the images were clearly manipulated, there were a few more "chilling" examples that were a "lot more plausible'.

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"You go through different phases with things like this," added Helen.

"There was one point where I was just trying to laugh about the almost ridiculous nature of some of it.

"But obviously, the underlying feeling was shock and actually I initially felt quite ashamed, as if I'd done something wrong. That was quite a difficult thing to overcome. And then for a while I got incredibly anxious about even leaving the house."

She alerted the police to the images but was told that no action could be taken as it falls outside the law.

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In England and Wales, it is an offence to non-consensually distribute or threaten to distribute a private sexual photograph or film with the intent to cause distress to the person depicted – but the law only applies where the original photo or video was private and sexual.

As the photos were non-sexual ones merged with sexual ones and as they were not shared with her directly, it is not covered by the criminal offence.

The independent Law Commission is currently reviewing the law as it applies to taking, making and sharing intimate images without consent. The outcome of the consultation is due to be published later this year.

A petition launched by Helen to change the law has received more than 3,400 signatures and she has also written a poem in response to the images.

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"I'm a writer by trade," she said. "And I thought the only thing that is going to allow me to reclaim any sense of agency here is to say something about it using my art form. That's the only power that I have.

"The intention of this person, as they said in their post, was to humiliate. They said they wanted to see this person humiliated, and I thought well actually I'm not humiliated, and I'm going to speak out about it because I shouldn't be the one who feels ashamed."

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