“Nude images of me were circulated online when I was a young teenager. Now I fight to protect other survivors.

Leah Juliett is an image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) expert, survivor, activist, and founder of the March Against Revenge Porn..

When I was a young teenager, a boy I knew pressured me into sending nudes on Facebook Messenger. Over a decade later, I still have all the messages. He complimented my body and was interested in me before asking for intimate photos. And when I refused him, he canceled his interest. I deeply wanted to be loved and to be seen. For years, I had a very negative relationship with my body and my self-image. Being “seen” by this boy was precious to me.

Finally, after a year of pressure, I sent him the four photos he asked for. My breasts, my face, my entire body exposed. I made him promise he would never share them. He laughed at me, like it was silly to think he would violate my privacy and consent. But that's exactly what he did.

I will never know exactly what triggered him (I was never able to talk to him about it and there is no excuse for his abuse), but around the same time I started coming out as queer, he Said he was going to ruin my life. I didn't know what that meant at the time, and I wasn't able to understand the gravity of the situation like I do today. He ended up sharing my naked images on Facebook Messenger with a group of boys in our town. They spread through my high school like wildfire. They were broadcast all over my town. And I thought: This is the worst it can be: kids at school look at me like they've seen me naked.. But it got worse.

The photos were posted on an international image board called Anon-IB, where my name, age, city, face and body were broadcast and accessible for over five years. They are probably still there today.

I was silent for a very long time after this happened. My attacker knew where I lived. He knew my little sister. He knew where I went to school. I knew that if I tried to speak out against him, my community would blame and shame me. I felt like he owned me, my dignity and my safety. I was also very, very afraid of being arrested. (In Connecticut, we did not have legislation protecting survivors of image-based sexual violence from also being held accountable for sharing the photos.)

I did my best to make myself as invisible as possible. I was afraid that if I didn't make myself absolutely small and quiet, something worse would happen, that more people would find out, that the photos would be published elsewhere. When I went to college, I left my small hometown and began relying on self-harm and alcohol to heal my pain. Meanwhile, at age 19, I experienced what survivor and researcher Dr. Spring Cooper calls a “f*ck it” moment. A moment when I was shaken.

I had opened Facebook on my laptop and saw a news article showing a photo of the man who had molested me when I was a teenager. It was a visceral moment to see his photo staring back at me. It's burned into my brain. And I said, “Okay, this man is either going to kill me for driving myself to death the way I'm dealing with the trauma of this situation, or I'm going to take action.” » At that moment, I decided to save my life and decided to act.

I wrote a poem; I started doing research. There weren't a lot of resources at the time for “revenge porn,” as I knew the term, or as other people talked about it. (I know now that I have never done anything that would warrant “revenge” and that my body is not inherently “pornographic”, especially my childhood body, so the correct terms are “sexual violence based on image” and “child sexual abuse material.” So I decided to speak out about my experience, and it started to get a lot of attention. I organized a protest march on the bridge. Brooklyn March Against Revenge Porn on April 1, 2017. It was a big cultural moment and a big personal moment for me. It propelled me into the field of advocacy, which is where I have been ever since.

Over the past decade, I have healed the parts of me that are cracked and broken as a result of this abuse and exploitation. And now, at 27, I find myself in a place where, despite my cracks, despite my fractures and despite the trauma inside me, I am strong enough to advocate against the people, the structures, the institutions that allowed this abuses like mine spread. arrive. Now I focus on the responsibility of the attackers.

I work with two coalitions that fight image-based sexual violence and child pornography on the internet, and we work to hold tech companies and abusers accountable.

At the Senate Judiciary hearing in January, I was in the room listening to the CEOs of major tech companies testify before Congress. I was joined by other survivors and I watched as parents and families of children who had died because of sextortion via this technology spoke. There were stories of young people buying fentanyl-laced pills on Snapchat, young men who committed suicide after being sextorted. And it made me realize that this abuse and violence enabled by our technologies and social media impacts so many of us in so many unique ways.

I experienced abuse in a very different internet and social media landscape than today. There were no precautions or tools to help protect and prevent this type of abuse on the platforms. Today, I feel lucky to live in a moment where my voice has value and the five years I endured in silence are not in vain.

But passing federal legislation is incredibly important. We don’t have laws criminalizing nonconsensual image sharing in all 50 states. (It’s a misdemeanor in some, and a felony in a few others.) If I had the power to change things right now, I would immediately pass the following proposed bills to protect children and prevent their abuse online:

• THE WIN IT, which allows websites to remove content posted by users deemed inappropriate and removes blanket immunity for violations of laws related to online child sexual abuse material (CSAM)

• THE SHIELD Actwhich makes the dissemination of intimate visual representations a criminal offense

• Children's Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would protect children online by allowing stricter privacy settings; making it easier to report harmful behavior; mitigating the proliferation of content that promotes eating disorders, substance abuse, CSA, and suicidal ideation; and requiring independent audits of the performance of social media platforms

When I started talking about it 10 years ago, no one wanted to listen to me. No one wanted to publish my story. The lawyers didn't want to work with me because I was under 18 when the incident happened. Everyone was mad at me and no one cared. But now we are at an inflection point. I've been begging everyone to listen to me on this issue for a decade, and people finally seem to be waking up. During the State of the Union, President Biden said it is time to pass legislation to protect children online. My dad texted me, “I heard this and immediately thought of you. »

If I could tell every young person one thing, it would be to instill in them that no matter what happens to you, abuse is never your fault. And whether it takes you two days or two years, five months or five years to come forward and say what happened to you, there will always be someone who will listen. There is a community of survivors, experts, and allies in this space who are ready to support and affirm you. You don’t have to just survive. You deserve to live out loud.

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