A bill making it a crime for intimate pictures or videos of a person to be distributed without the person’s knowledge, an act commonly known as “revenge porn,” is one step closer to becoming a law.
House Bill 85 would create a law making the unlawful dissemination of intimate images (sending out videos/photos depicting people in a sexual act) a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and/or a $5,000 fine.
The bill was approved in its second reading in the Senate on Friday.
During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill on March 19, sponsor Rep. Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs, told committee members that the bill would be an important addition to Wyoming’s criminal laws.
“What is commonly known as ‘revenge porn’ is not a crime in Wyoming and there are only a handful of states where this isn’t a crime,” Stith said.
Stith, an attorney, added he became aware of this issue because he had a client who engaged in “revenge porn,” but the local prosecutor was in a challenging situation because the act was not illegal.
“He either had to charge nothing or he had to try and shoehorn the conduct into some other category,” Stith said. “Your typical case is where you’ve got a jilted boyfriend who then has an intimate image that he initially got consensually from his ex.”
Stith explained the ex-boyfriend will be upset and post the image to social media or find another way to use it to humiliate a woman.
He added that the charges were eventually dropped against his client.
“From a lawyer’s point of view that sounds like a victory, but it didn’t really feel like justice, frankly,” Stith said.
