By Samantha McCoy, Lived-Experience Expert of Image-Based Abuse and SA
For many people, image‑based abuse is a distant concept. It is thought of something that happens online, somewhere else, to someone else. For me, it was the second wave of a trauma that had already nearly destroyed me. I was raped, and the assault was recorded without my knowledge. That recording was then shared, turning the worst moment of my life into something passed from person to person. The assault didn’t end when the violence stopped. It followed me, resurfacing in ways I couldn’t anticipate, reshaping my sense of safety, and altering the course of my life. When your trauma becomes content, the harm becomes both endless and borderless.
Living with that kind of violation means living with questions that are never fully quiet: Who has seen it? Who might see it next? How might it be used to shame, silence, or retraumatize me? Now, with the rise of AI‑generated sexual images and deepfakes, the threat has grown even more insidious. Today, a survivor doesn’t even need to have been photographed or recorded for their likeness to be weaponized. Technology can fabricate images that feel real enough to ruin reputations, relationships, and lives. The violence is evolving faster than our systems can prevent or prosecute it, and survivors are left to navigate the fallout. The systems meant to protect us, including legal, technological, and institutional, are still struggling to keep pace.
What’s happening across the country and around the world is not a niche problem. It’s a rapidly expanding form of gender‑based violence that most communities are still unprepared to confront. Reports have surged in recent years, yet many survivors are told there’s “Little that can be done.” Laws lag behind technology. Institutions struggle to respond and survivors face barriers that compound the trauma rather than alleviate it. The gap between the scale of the problem and the readiness of our systems is where so many people fall through.
But there is also a growing recognition that this moment demands more from all of us, including more understanding, more urgency, more willingness to see the full scope of the harm. Communities are beginning to ask harder questions about accountability, prevention, and what it means to support survivors whose trauma has been captured, circulated, or digitally fabricated. People are realizing that this isn’t just a legal issue or a technology issue; it’s a human issue that touches safety, dignity, consent, and the right to reclaim one’s own narrative. That shift matters, and it’s opening the door to conversations that were unthinkable even a few years ago.
We’re continuing this dialogue at the 2026 Conference on Crimes Against Women, where Ilse Knecht from the Joyful Heart Foundation and I will present Image-Based Abuse: What Advocates and Justice Professionals Need to Know. Not because there are easy answers, but because we create room for truth, complexity, and collective responsibility. We seek to bring together people who want to understand this issue more deeply and who are ready to imagine something better, whether stronger protections, more informed responses, and communities that refuse to look away. If you care about safety, justice, or the ways technology is reshaping harm, this is a conversation you’ll want to be part of. I hope you’ll join us.
