Since 2004, the Joyful Heart Foundation has been working toward realizing its vision of a world free of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse through efforts to heal, educate, and empower survivors and transform society’s response to these crimes.
Our top priority for the last decade has been ending the rape kit backlog. Through our End the Backlog initiative (www.endthebacklog.org), we are focused on achieving an ambitious goal: enacting comprehensive rape kit reform laws in all 50 states. Led by staff and board members who are national experts on the rape kit backlog, Joyful Heart works to identify jurisdictions with rape kit backlogs and help them develop and implement survivor-centered reforms. We provide support and guidance to local and state elected officials on all aspects of rape kit reform, including drafting and amending legislation, inventorying untested kits, handling media requests, establishing rape kit tracking systems, prioritizing which kits to test first, and reengaging survivors in the criminal justice system process to ensure that reform legislation is informed by their voices and others from across the country. Through our ongoing research and public records requests, we make information available on where the backlog exists and how jurisdictions have improved their rape kit testing policies.
Joyful Heart is currently mounting a new initiative to combat online image abuse, or Image Based Sexual Assault (IBSA), building on our expertise managing one of the most successful advocacy campaigns in history—our campaign to end the rape kit backlog. This project will develop a similar framework to address the non consensual creation and distribution of private sexual images.
This initiative will further advance our mission to transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, support survivors’ healing, and end this violence forever.
Image Based Sexual Assault (IBSA) includes the non consensual creation and/or distribution of sexual images that are generated with out the individual’s consent. These images can be shared millions of times online over social media, “revenge porn” sites, text or other messaging service, and of course in person. Some images may be original, some are altered in some way via photoshop, artificial intelligence (AI) or similar methods. It is important to note that any such images that involve children ages 0-17 constitutes child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) also known as “child pornography” and is illegal under federal law.
News reports of “upskirting” or “downblousing” began to surface in mainstream media in the early 2000s. Today, the internet is full of stories of video voyeurism, “revenge porn” cases, deep fakes and morph porn. Research is scarce on the issue and the fact that many victims don’t report or don’t recognize what happened to them as a crime, it’s likely that the rate is much higher.
Sadly, it seems that image based abuse is becoming more prevalent especially due to ever advancing technologies and increased access to AI. According to a 2020 U.S. study, one in twelve adults have experienced a form of image based sexual abuse. An Australian study estimated that as many as one in 10 Australians had a sexual or nude image of themselves distributed without consent.
As Joyful Heart begins its new national campaign to combat IBSA, it will follow a similar roadmap to what was successful in the rape kit backlog work. Using a comprehensive review of the current state, federal, and international laws, conversations with major players in the field, as well as studying recent successes, Joyful Heart will develop awareness raising materials and resources for survivors, policymakers, and advocates in order to stop this terrible form of abuse and invasion of privacy.
Joyful Heart is deeply connected to this work through our relationships. We regularly collaborate with organizations that work to end gender based violence. We are also a member of the Reclaim Coalition, a newly formed group of organizations across the world working to end IBSA. As such, Joyful Heart will leverage its relationship with the Reclaim Coalition and other national and international experts when doing this work to ensure that this campaign enhances and lifts up the work that has already been done.
The ultimate goal of this project is to create a solid foundation of information from which Joyful Heart can launch our campaign to combat IBSA and provide paths to justice and healing for survivors. This includes a thorough review of: existing state, federal and international laws to examine definitions of prohibited behaviors; existing legal protections for victims; available civil remedies; and current technology platform accountability and responsibility policies, among others. This work will include collecting media accounts of IBSA cases. A key component of all of Joyful Heart’s work includes raising awareness and providing education about issues related to abuse and trauma for survivors, policymakers, advocates and the public. As such, the IBSA campaign will expand awareness and education by creating written materials and podcasts about IBSA for our website and social media.
At the end of this project, we expect to have detailed documents that examine IBSA related state, federal, and international laws, broken down by certain criteria, and a comparative briefing paper that helps us understand the various aspects of these laws including common themes and weaknesses amongst the laws. Types of questions we are hoping to have answered in this briefing paper are: does current law(s) cover dissemination of images and do states have laws that prohibit surreptitiously filming someone under garments of clothing? Among other questions. The hope is that this research will help us understand the various aspects of the laws that are currently on the books, where the laws are lacking, and which laws are most comprehensive.
Based on this research and briefing paper, we hope to have the student(s) design 2-3 factsheets and campaign content for our website; social media messages to be used as an introduction of our campaign; and the creation of a policy opportunity chart for state and national policymakers that will assist in focusing our policy/legislative priorities. Student will have an opportunity to present to our staff (and potentially our board and allies) about their work.
