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Washington Senate Votes To Criminalize 'Revenge Porn'

Kevin Mooney
/
Northwest News Network
The Washington Senate voted unanimously Wednesday to criminalize ''revenge porn.''

Oregon and Washington are close to joining neighboring states in specifically outlawing "revenge porn."

That's when a person posts "intimate" photos of someone else on the Internet without the subject's consent.

The Washington Senate voted unanimously Wednesday to criminalize revenge porn, just as the Oregon Senate did in late February on a similar measure. Idaho made it a felony last year.

Republican state Senator Mike Padden of Spokane said a first offense in Washington would be a gross misdemeanor.

"A reasonable person would know or understand that the image was to remain private,” he said.

The measure needs to go back to the Washington House for concurrence with an amendment before it goes on to the governor's desk. Oregon's House and Senate have swapped similar measures this session.

Earlier this year, victims of revenge porn testified in both Olympia and Salem about the humiliation and helplessness they felt upon discovering that naked pictures of themselves were stolen off of a laptop or iPhone and shared.

California was the first state to expressly target revenge porn with a law that took effect in 2013. Earlier this month, a San Diego man who ran a revenge porn website was sentenced to 18 years in prison. In that case, angry lovers posted nude photos of others to the website anonymously. When the subjects in the photos complained to the website operator, he charged them hundreds of dollars each to take intimate photos down. The stiff prison sentence resulted from conviction on multiple counts of identity theft and extortion.

Besides Idaho, the Utah and Arizona legislatures also passed similar bills to criminalize revenge porn last year. Arizona's law is currently on hold and being re-worked after a federal judge ruled it was overly broad and could criminalize speech that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Now semi-retired, Tom Banse covered national news, business, science, public policy, Olympic sports and human interest stories from across the Northwest. He reported from well known and out–of–the–way places in the region where important, amusing, touching, or outrageous events unfolded. Tom's stories can be found online and were heard on-air during "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" on NPR stations in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.