Quebec tabled a bill Thursday morning to act against the scourge represented by the sharing of intimate images without consent, a situation which has exploded since the pandemic and which also involves criminal organizations.
“We are in the presence of a situation that is quite serious,” explained René Morin, spokesperson for the Canadian Center for Child Protection, about the explosion of this phenomenon since the pandemic.
According to Statistics Canada, 1,168 non-consensual distributions of intimate images took place in 2023, an increase from 726 such sharings in 2019.
“We have been receiving reports of sextortion at the rate of seven to ten per day for several months,” confirmed Mr. Morin in an interview with LCN on Thursday.
Although sharing without consent is indeed a criminal offense, certain provinces have nevertheless decided to put in place additional remedies, sometimes civil, for people who are threatened with the distribution of intimate images or whose images have been shared.
“These are remedies that are not necessarily provided for by federal laws,” he said.
Foreign organizations involved
The distribution of intimate images on the Internet goes much further than simple sharing between young people, for example.
“The problem with sextortion is that you increasingly have criminal organizations often based abroad, in countries like the Philippines for example or countries in East Africa, which are just scouring social media in search of potential targets,” underlined Mr. Morin.
“What they are basically looking for, especially when dealing with young boys, is to obtain ransoms in exchange for the possibility of not disseminating the intimate images that they have managed to to obtain,” he said.
