Reporter/Ni Ruyu
Editor/Justice Qiu
In an online chat room with as many as 280,000 people, Li Sha found nude photos of herself. Together with thousands of photos of ordinary people's lives and private photographs, they are for people to speculate, rumor and insult.
Here, the only criterion is stimulation, and the members of the group constantly "sacrifice" photos of the people around them - their girlfriends, colleagues, sisters, mothers, just to let people know that the people in the photos are like "pigs and dogs" and "slaves" and can be humiliated wantonly.
Li Sha reported the case twice, and the final result was that the person who posted the photo was detained by the police for five days. The latter is still doing the same thing after being released. Chen Yang, another victim of intimate videos of couples, tried to go deep into the complex and dark system to find the root cause of the problem, but in the end he found that everything was in a vicious circle.
In the South Korea N Room incident, Zhao Zhubin, who is in his twenties, was arrested as the main suspect
Just like South Korea's "Room N", not only are photos and videos widely circulated, but the victims' personal privacy information is also pulled out. Some have been sexually harassed by the phone and live amid enormous online violence and insecurity. When they ask for help, they find that reality is full of barriers, not only can not know where the evil people are, let alone punish them.
And when some of the victims finally plucked up the courage to stand up and express their hurts and rebuke the perpetrators who hid in the darkness, these chat rooms ushered in a new carnival.
"Sacrifice your girlfriend, sister, friend"
"Are you looking at this picture?" One night in the first half of 2020, Li Sha, a female college student, suddenly received a message from a WeChat friend who said that she had seen a photo of her on Twitter and sent her a photo. This photo is exactly what Lisa is nude.
Li Sha was so frightened that her hands trembled and she went to question her ex-boyfriend Yu Jian, who had recently broken up. He admitted that the photos were secretly taken when they were in love before, and they were also sent by him. Li Sha, who was forced to calm down, took the evidence that night, went to the police for the first time, and also told her ex-boyfriend's parents. The other party's mother apologized to her, but the police had no follow-up and did not succeed.
What Lisa didn't expect was that the nightmare would begin.
Six months later, she received a private message from Weibo saying that her photo appeared in an overseas software chat group. She joined the group and saw her life photo with a Microblog watermark, next to a private video of another girl. Someone asked, "Does anyone want to play?" ”
There are many such chat rooms, ranging from 280,000 to 140,000 to thousands. They all come from an instant messaging app with servers overseas, where users can send photos, videos, etc. in a "burn-and-burn" manner. The "Room N" incident in South Korea, which shook the world before, occurred here.
In South Korea's Room N incident, at least 74 women, including 16 underage girls, were lured and blackmailed to share their sexual photos online
Photographs of women kept coming in, and the act was known as "sacrifice." They are college students, white-collar workers, medical workers, mothers, aunts, sisters, and girlfriends. Wedding photos, pregnant women's photos, dinner photos, work photos and even private photos that they post on social platforms or are "sacrificed" to chat rooms by acquaintances such as their partners, colleagues, roommates, teachers, brothers, etc., for netizens to imagine and insult.
Here, they are called "pigs and dogs" and "slaves", and the photo captions are usually "leaks", "humiliation", and various incomprehensible words.
In addition, their names, school or work units, mobile phone numbers, and even ID card information have also been extracted and made public in groups, which may bring them more sexual harassment and harm.
Lisa began to soak in the chat room looking for her own photos. After observing for many days, she found that the photos were sent by multiple specific accounts at the same time, repeatedly deleted, and mentioned her real name, school and other personal information, most likely by acquaintances. Later, Li Sha determined that this was her ex-boyfriend Yu Jian, and in the private video next to her life photo, it was Yu Jian's current girlfriend Xiao A.
Ex-boyfriend Yu Jian is Li Sha's high school classmate and her first love. The two had known each other for many years and knew each other's roots, and Lisha never thought that he would do such a thing to himself.
In the second half of 2021, Li Sha found a lawyer, collected Yu Jian's evidence, and reported to the police for the second time for the crime of spreading obscene materials for profit. During the investigation phase, she went to the chat room again to rummage through photos sent by her ex-boyfriend, and even found an underage high school girl.
There are people in group chats who think they can send anything as long as they don't involve children
After calling the police this time, Li Sha also told Xiao A about this matter. After the two exchanged, Li Sha learned that Yu Jian had been slandering her in front of Xiao A, saying that her previous alarm had caused him to have depression tendencies and must take revenge. Xiao A said that Yu Jian had serious psychological problems and had abused and killed cats while posting photos of his love cats on social platforms.
Over the past year or so, Li Sha has wanted to start a new life countless times, but she has always fallen back to the same place, and she feels that she may be destroyed by the other party at any time. "I may have been stripped naked a long time ago, but I thought I was wearing clothes."
"Every day is like drowning"
It was not only women who were "sacrificed", another boy, Chen Yang, also suffered a similar incident.
Last October, a close friend told him that he had seen a private video of him and his girlfriend on a app, reminding him to pay attention to protecting his privacy. Chen Yang tracked down and found that the video of him and his girlfriend was also posted in a chat room.
Some couple victims are like them, because of computer repairs, network disk theft, etc., the privacy between couples is privately sent to pornographic chat rooms, websites and apps.
Chen Yang and his girlfriend almost had a nervous breakdown, seeing their photos and videos spread in groups of hundreds of thousands of people and on social networks every day, being scrutinized and humiliated. He didn't want to sit still, so he began to contact group owners and bloggers, hoping that they would delete the post.
In the process of the reporter's investigation, it was found that almost all the victims would have similar deletion encounters: some people were very cooperative, and they deleted them immediately after understanding the situation; some people not only did not delete, but also threatened and blackmailed the victims and harmed them twice; even more, in the name of help, they deceived the victims' trust and obtained more information.
In the process of finding his own "resources", Chen Yang also found a female netizen he knew, whose life photos were also posted in the chat room, and he informed her.
For victims of online sexual violence, harm is triggered repeatedly and added with each upload, review and humiliation. "The photos and videos that are passed out are like time bombs that can explode at any moment because you don't know who's going to save them. Maybe one day on a whim, it suddenly turned over to this thing, and sent it out again, causing another wave of transmission. Chen Yang said.
Therefore, Chen Yang has never stopped looking for and deleting posts. After two months of hard work and struggle, it is difficult to see at present.
In order to stop her photos from continuing to spread, Li Sha also joined multiple chat rooms. She once flipped through chat photos in a group of 280,000 people, and tens of thousands of obscene messages were transmitted to the group every day, and it took nearly half an hour to read the content of the day.
At first, she was afraid to see her own photos, but then she was afraid that she would not be able to find her own photos, because only by finding them could she delete them, which was better than not knowing where the photos were secretly circulated.
Soaking in extremely filthy words and videos every day, waking up like living in a dream, she felt that she was not in the real world, but in their world.
The photos spread in group chats, and the victims kept having nightmares.
In the group chat, there are those who ask for photos, and there are also those who take active photos
In Lisha's dreams, her ex-boyfriend appeared at her school again and again, at her doorstep, around her friends, classmates and even family, claiming to ruin her life. In Chen Yang's dream, he is like in real life, constantly tracking the source of these pornographic software, websites, and chat rooms, like walking in a long dark tunnel, not knowing when it will be the end.
"Every day it was like drowning, unable to breathe at all. The struggle didn't help either, sinking deeper and deeper. Lisha's mental state deteriorated.
When she was looking for a photo, she quickly swiped the screen of her mobile phone, and the faces of ordinary girls with smiling flowers flashed in front of her eyes, and she felt the collapse of trust and disappointment in human nature. She began to lose control of her temper, and she was angry at very small things, and it was easy to fall into sadness. At first, she thought it was a normal reaction to being frightened, but never recovered, so she went to a psychologist and was diagnosed with a traumatic stress response.
Seeing that many of the people in the chat room who look at pictures and post pictures are college students, Li Sha began to reject the school from the heart. In addition to classes, she just wanted to stay away from school.
In the group chat, some people sent comments on the lives of classmates, and some people questioned
The psychologist repeatedly suggested that she take a break from school and be hospitalized, but she did not tell her parents about it, so she had to retreat to the second place and quietly rented a house outside the school. For a year, she didn't want to socialize with anyone, let alone make new friends or fall in love.
She made all her social platform photos visible only to herself and never posted any photos of herself again. Even outside the chat room, when she usually sees some abusive words about women on the Internet, she will think of group chats that seem to belong to another world - will it be the same group of people, and they will show up?
Nowhere to call for help: The victim called the police twice, resulting in only 5 days of detention
Although victims can get some psychological comfort by deleting posts, on a practical level, it is difficult for them to get practical assistance.
"Although the police sympathized with me, they didn't think it was a particularly serious matter." After the first report in 2020, Li Sha did not get feedback on the case. In 2021, the photos were sent out again, and the second time she called the police at the same public security bureau, she heard the police say that the first time the case was not filed, in large part because the suspect Yu Jian claimed to have mania and depression.
The second time she called the police, Li Sha gave evidence to the police, hoping to punish Yu Jian for spreading obscene materials for profit. However, due to the insufficient number of photos disseminated, criminal cases could not be filed. In the end, Yu Jian was detained for 5 days only for spreading obscene information.
According to the Beijing News interview with the relevant police officers, the number of images and audio is an important basis for the public security organs to handle such cases. With just a few screenshots and text dialogue, it is difficult to identify as a crime. In addition, because the server of the social software involved in the case is overseas, the investigation and collection of evidence is difficult, and the functions of user anonymity, information terminal encryption, and timed destruction of chat information also increase the difficulty of detection.
Ordinary people's life photos and privacy photos are becoming a tool for sexual abuse in pornographic chat rooms, and their privacy has also been exposed, and there is a danger of offline harassment
After Yu Jian was released, he began to be active in the chat room again, "sacrificing" photos of women. There is also a "provocation" of Lisha , who likes and posts a tweet with her photo on his social media account. Li Sha, worried that her ex-boyfriend's harm to her would recur, called the police again, and although the police comforted her that she would investigate clearly, she has not been contacted since.
"Victims like me have been very lucky. At least 5 days of detention have been held, and many people will not even file a case. Although this was not the result That Lisa wanted, she could only accept it.
And Chen Yang continued, "At least for half a year, I can't find our video, I can put my mind at ease." In early January, he found his video in a group chat, which the poster said was reprinted from a site.
Chen Yang hopes to unite more victims and speak out together. But in the current environment, this seems to be getting harder and harder. Because exposing the victim to himself will undoubtedly only make the people in the chat room more excited.
A public account blogger once wrote an article for the victims. Her backstage had received dozens of private messages from girls with similar victimization experiences. Ironically, the number of chat rooms has increased since the article revealed the group chat address.
The author's own comment area, on the other hand, experienced three days of verbal abuse. She was stripped of her name and school, and had to delete all selfies and tweets and photos on social media that might have exposed information in order to prevent her from becoming a victim of the chat room. She was even secretly glad that she was about to move, otherwise the consequences would be unimaginable.
In the lower left corner, the girl's personal information was pulled out in detail, and the picture on the right is a group chat discussion of media reports
Another platform blogger also posted a video disclosing the matter. But soon, her videos and photos were posted to groups and her personal information was also pulled out. In the group, a fifteen-year-old high school student asked for credit and triggered a new round of revelry in the chat room.
At the same time, she also received many private messages of support, and some girls recounted their experiences to her, which resonated with her. She never regretted speaking out, and she will continue to pay attention to this matter. "The purpose of making the video is to let more people know about this matter and let the victims dare to defend their rights and stand up and resist."
Lisa also reached out to some unsuspecting girls, and she found that everyone was hurting in their own way.
After Xiao A and Yu Jian broke up, they wanted to go to the police, but because she and Yu Jian were not in the same city, the police suggested that she go to Yu Jian's location, that is, the place where the crime occurred. Because of the epidemic, Xiao A's school required a guardian to accompany her to the police in a different place, but the counselor could not get out, and the alarm was suspended.
Li Sha also contacted a girl whose private photos and wedding photos were widely disseminated. The other party told her on QQ that she and her husband had just received the license for less than a month, and her husband immediately admitted that he had done it when he saw the photo. After some time, the girl told Lisha that she was looking for a lawyer and was preparing to sue for divorce. Later, Lisa found that she had deleted herself.
"In fact, it can also be understood that since they cannot be solved, they can only escape, do not look, this is the only way to reduce the harm." Lisa understood the victims of these choices of silence. She also understands that for a long time to come, she will need to spend a lot of daily energy to heal the damage she has suffered, and she now tries to find her photos in the group chat as little as possible.
(In the text, Li Sha, Chen Yang, and Yu Jian are pseudonyms)
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