The Fight for Federal Action in the Age of Revenge Porn

The locker room was supposed to be safe. A shower, a towel, the comfort of routine—until a phone clicked: teenage bickering and jealousy taken to a dangerous extreme.

By the time the then 16-year-old school athletics star, whose family requested anonymity, stepped into the hallway, the nonconsensual shower image was already spreading. Parents, police and lawyers were summoned. The college hopes of the perpetrators crumbled. The psychological torment lives on.

This is hardly an isolated story.

Revenge porn, or nonconsensual porn, also referred to as NDII, is the distribution of intimate images without consent. While not always driven by revenge, it’s often used as retaliation after failed relationships. With sexting on the rise, so is this form of abuse—fueled by an estimated 2,000 dedicated websites and countless victims whose private images remain exposed. There is no federal law that outlaws this abuse.

The First Lady is one of several high-profile figures across a bipartisan spectrum endeavoring to change that.