Sextortion and Corruption: What is Sexual Extortion?
Today, the State Duma Ethics Commission considered the complaints of journalists on harassment of the deputy Leonid Slutsky. Over the past month, accusations against a member of the LDPR faction have ceased to be anonymous: Deputy Editor-in-Chief of RTVI Ekaterina Kotrikadze, Dozhd’s producer Daria Zhuk and BBC Russian correspondent Farid Rustamova openly opposed him. The commission did not find any violations in the actions of Leonid Slutsky, which is not surprising: there are few public statements about harassment in Russia and even less successful experience in dealing with it. Nevertheless, the conversation on this topic has finally begun - and this is important, given how rarely it sounds in public space.
In world practice, for such situations the term "sextortion" is used - if roughly translated into Russian, this can be called "sexual extortion". Such cases can be viewed not only as manifestations of harassment, but also as blackmail and abuse of power - this is an attempt to achieve sex in exchange for some kind of service or favor. Sexual extortion can be considered not only cases similar to the charges of Leonid Slutsky, but also, for example, situations where the teacher forces the student to have sex with him, threatening not to set off otherwise, or demands to send intimate photos under threat of dismissal.
The connection between harassment and corruption is not difficult to trace: harassment has nothing to do with sex - as in the case of bribes, it is up to one person to be in power over another and to abuse it. With the help of the study "Transparency International - Russia" we understand the difficult issue.
Harassment and Corruption
The term "sextortion" is still not widespread - although it is used by various organizations and human rights defenders. In 2008, it was introduced into the legal circulation by the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ). It defines sextorshen as a form of corruption, where the role of a bribe is played by sex (or other actions of a sexual nature — for example, intimate photos), and not money. IAWJ calls for distinguishing it from other types of harassment and sexual exploitation - primarily due to the corruption component: “The criminal must be in a position of power and abuse this power, demanding sexual services or accepting them in exchange for using the power entrusted to him”.
In their opinion, there are three signs of a sextorsion: abuse of power, the exchange of one service for another (sex or actions associated with it, for something else) and psychological coercion (unlike many other forms of violence and harassment, where go and physical strength).
New high-profile cases of sexual extortion appear with frightening regularity. According to the Associated Press, more than two hundred women in Haiti said that members of the UN peacekeeping forces who helped the region recover from the earthquake forced them to have sex in exchange for money or humanitarian aid — for example, children's things or medicines. In 2015, a US immigration officer required a young woman from Colombia to have sex with him in exchange for a green card - and this is just one of many such cases.
Despite the fact that sexual extortion is very common, they are still talking about them a little - and all the more not as a separate crime. Plays a role and the fact that harassment may be harder to prove in court than the requirement of a cash bribe, and that it is difficult for victims to talk about what happened, and the prosecution of victims. In addition, extortion of money is primarily associated with corruption - and intangible bribes are said less often.
Dmitry Tolkachev, an analyst at the HSE Anti-Corruption Policy Laboratory, points out that several countries are struggling in some form with the sextorshoe. For example, the Brazilian penal code provides for up to two years in prison for "using high status or seniority due to employment status, position or function performed to gain sexual advantage by coercing another person." Canadian law punishes corruption, abuse of power, and coercion to sex in exchange for any services — all are elements of the sextorshen. In Kenya, under the law on combating corruption and economic crime, a person who uses his authority for personal gain faces up to ten years in prison. At the same time, the benefit can be interpreted widely enough - including as "sexual gain". Nevertheless, experts talk about the problems in the legislation: for example, in Kenya, many laws on sexual harassment apply only to the working environment - but neither sexual extortion nor harassment as a whole is not limited to it.
Ph.D. in Law, Anna Rivina, head of the Violent Internet project, notes that the peculiarity of Russian legislation is that some terms are not spelled out in it - such as domestic violence, cases of which may fall under different articles of the Criminal Code and the Civil Code. but the concept itself is not in the legislation. The expert notes that the concept of sextorsion is also not spelled out in the law, but there are several articles that make it possible to declare a violated right not only in ethical, but also in legal terms. Issues of sexual freedom and sexual safety are affected by article 133 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Forcing to actions of a sexual nature". Nevertheless, according to the expert, the issue of enforcement is much more important in this situation and the fact that the existing norms do not work in practice. "It is important to speak here not about the absence or presence of a crime, but about the unwillingness to use those limited mechanisms that already exist," Rivina said.
In July 2017, a bill was passed to the State Duma, which they call the bill "On Intangible Bribe". According to one of its authors, the deputy Anatoly Vyborny, he is called upon to repel "nepotism and cronyism" - for example, in cases when a degree becomes a bribe or children enroll in a prestigious university. The bill has not yet passed even the first reading. “The electoral said nothing about sexual services as a form of corruption, but in principle they can also be considered as a form of non-material bribe,” says Dmitry Tolkachev. “The problem is that this bill provides for responsibility only for receiving such a bribe, but not for extortion.” .
“From the point of view of countering corruption, it is not necessary to single out sextorshen into a special category of crimes,” says Ilya Shumanov, deputy director of Transparency International - Russia. “Although in some countries this has already been done. There is a recommendation from GRECO (Group of countries against corruption) to criminalize non-material bribes Russia is included in the GRECO and more or less regularly executes its recommendations, in particular, the bill on intangible bribes has already been submitted to the State Duma. So, sexual services bribe is also intangible in son-in-law, and, accordingly, sextorshen also automatically criminalized. "
According to Ilya Shumanov, the question of the sextorshen is still new for the legal field, but it is picked up by anti-corruption, human rights and feminist organizations: “So one can expect that in the next twenty years it will somehow enter into the legislation of most countries. And Russia including".
Extortion on the Internet
The Internet has given new opportunities for sexual extortion - perhaps partly because of this, some organizations, such as Interpol, speak of sexual extortion primarily as an online crime. In such cases, it is no longer necessary to talk about corruption - but still about blackmail and the power over the victim. Usually such cases are divided into two types: extortion of content and extortion of money. A person takes possession of intimate photographs or a video of the victim, but in the first case he asks to send more, threatening that otherwise he will put everything in open access, and in the second case he needs money so that the information does not become public.
Sextor on the Internet reminds pornomest - another type of online harassment, when a person puts intimate photos of the victim on the Web, trying to get revenge on her. Nevertheless, they draw a line between them. Benjamin Wittes, a researcher at the Brookings Institution and author of "Sextortion: Cybersecurity Teenagers and Remote Sexual Assault," believes that sexual extortion occurs when the victim is forced to have sex. In the case of pornography, this is not about sexual acts themselves, but about content created with the consent of the victim or without him, and deliberately thrown into open access, although the victim herself did not want to.
The Internet provides convenient tools for sexual extortion: the victim has no opportunity to hide, and the threats become especially terrible, because they can be carried out instantly. From here - really scale stories of harassment. Last year, a New Hampshire resident, Ryan Valley, was sentenced to eight years in the United States. The victims were dozens of teenage girls: he hacked into their accounts, and then blackmailed and forced to send him intimate photos — his own and her girlfriends, who then also began to blackmail. One day, he created a Facebook account, the name of which was just one letter different from the name of his victim, uploaded intimate photos of her and added to friends of her friends and relatives. He also admitted that he sent photos of the victims to their friends.
A 42-year-old male university professor was arrested in Australia. He faked online justin bieber and forced underage girls to send him intimate photos. A few years ago, nearly sixty people were arrested in the Philippines - the group was engaged in mass sexual extortion. They found victims in chat rooms, offered them to engage in virtual sex and appear on a webcam, and then threatened to publish the records - usually the victims paid from five hundred to two thousand dollars for the information not to become public.
There is no single way to deal with such crimes - including because the sextorshen is not singled out as a separate crime. In the USA, where penalties for online extortion are not uncommon, they vary greatly: for example, cases in which intimate photographs are extorted from minors are regarded as exploitation of children or possessing child pornography for which large periods of time are relied. In the case of adults, the punishment is on average between a month and six years - the court regards these cases as stalking, hacking a computer or stealing personal data, for which milder penalties are provided.
The situation is complicated by the fact that it is difficult for victims to talk about their experiences - on the one hand, because of victimization (“Why did you send more photos to a person who blackmails you?”), On the other, because of shame: extortion is based on that the victim does not want the photos to become public - and it can be very difficult for her to admit to others that they exist.
What would be the possible legal norm, affecting sextorshen is still unknown - there are more questions than answers. Is it worth it to single it out as a separate crime or are there sufficient punishments for harassment and violence? What exactly is included in this concept - online harassment or corruption component? Only one thing is clear: society is changing, and along with a change in attitudes towards harassment and violence, legal norms must also change. The fact that even fifty years ago seemed normal (or, as in the case of online extortion, impossible), today needs to be changed - and the beginning of these changes in the plea.
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