Online Violence Targets Women

KOMPAS/HENDRA A SETYAWAN

An anti-violence message against women and children through mural media appears in the Gandaria area, Jakarta, on Tuesday (5/3/2019).

Women have become increasingly vulnerable to violence on the internet in line with the more extensive use of gadgets during the pandemic. The sanctions imposed on perpetrators are too lenient.

JAKARTA, KOMPAS — Social media applications can be an online criminal gateway if members of the public lack caution when they access various accounts linked with the internet. A number of women and young girls have become victims of gender-based physical, sexual and economic violence in the cyber sphere.

The mode of online crime often referred to as online gender-based violence gets even more sophisticated and targets women as the use of internet related gadgets is on the rise. The facilitated interaction via social media has acquainted them with certain persons without meeting directly, even engaging in close relations with no knowledge of their partners’ identities.

When such cases are reported to the police, the true identities of some of the culprits cannot be found so that they escape further tracing.

Amid the pandemic, some women are actively preoccupied with social media and have fallen victim to online gender-based violence. However, the majority of victims dare not report to the police. They were snared by the flatteries of perpetrators through social media to the extent of sexual and economic exploitation. When such cases are reported to the police, the true identities of some of the culprits cannot be found so that they escape further tracing.

Also read: Digital Trap of Sexual and Economic Exploitation

Reports in several institutes handling violence against women and children show that there has been a rising trend of cases of online gender-based violence in the Covid-19 pandemic period. The Legal Aid Institute of the Indonesian Women’s Association for Justice (LBH APIK), Jakarta, for instance, during March-November 2020 received 196 complaints.

“We handle the case of KBGO (online gender-based violence) with a young girl aged 16 as the victim on Twitter. Her parents didn’t know the case that involved her. She was made a girlfriend of an account owner and then asked to send her half-naked and nude pictures,” said LBH APIK Jakarta Director Siti Mazuma on Sunday (13/12/2020).

Later the victim was exploited. The perpetrator coming from a cybercrime syndicate forced the victim to have sexual intercourse. When the victim refused, the offender threatened to spread her photos. “This girl was frightened for a few months,” added Mazuma.

KOMPAS/YUNIADHI AGUNG

Survivors and families of victims of human rights violence see a mural in the building of the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan), Jakarta, which was made to commemorate incidents of violence against women, on Thursday (15/10/2015).

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) received 659 complaints about online gender-based violence comprising 341 cases of domestic violence and 318 cases of communities. This total is higher than those in 2018 (97 cases) and 2019 (281 reports).

“The KBGO reports during the pandemic indicate a pattern of violence against women that should be responded to by the state,” said Siti Aminah Tardi, a Komnas Perempuan commissioner.

Sexual object

In the circles of civil society organizations/institutes, online gender-based violence is defined as acts of violence by means of digital technology related to women’s bodies as a sexual object. In general, such violence is committed via social media applications like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter.

The forms of online violence reported are among others cyber grooming, cyber harassment, hacking, illegal content, privacy violations, threats to distribute private photos/videos, online defamation, deception, and online recruitment.

The mode is that perpetrators make acquaintance through dating social media/applications without meeting. The perpetrators ask their victims to have online sexual activity, which is secretly documented. The offenders threaten to spread the pornographic photos or videos if the victims refuse to have sex and exploit the victims.

The violence can continue offline so that the victims experience a combination of physical, sexual and psychological tortures, online as well as in the real world.

The police could only identify 21 girls and 2 boys as victims.

Based on the monitoring of the End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) Indonesia 2019, there were 40 cases of sexual violence in the cyber world with around 100 child victims. The police could only identify 21 girls and 2 boys as victims.

“A lot more children have been made a sexual object in the cyber sphere. The distribution of child sexual violence materials and cases of grooming keep going,” said Andy Ardian, Manager of ECPAT Indonesia.

Head of the KBGO Subdivision of SAFEnet, Ellen Kusuma, said that in 2019 SAFEnet got 60 complaints, 44 of which were referrals from Komnas Perempuan and 16 others through SAFEnet’s communication channel. Of the total, 53 victims submitting their cases were women.

Most of the violence reported took the forms of intimate content distribution without consent (45 cases), privacy violations, non-consensual control, bugging, unauthorized access (7 cases), and account imitation (2 cases).

Valentina Ginting, Deputy Assistant for Protection of Women’s Rights in Households of the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry, stated that online gender-based violence should be dealt with by all parties, especially the police and the Communication and Informatics Ministry.

Kompas/Raditya Helabumi

Comr. Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo

National Police Criminal Investigation Department chief Comr. Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo at the Cyber Police Festival said social media crime had increased by 75.73 percent in 2015-2019. In 2015 there were 2,609 cases, soaring to 4,585 cases in 2019. In the period, 624 cases were thoroughly handled in 2015 and 2,282 cases in 2019.

Reni Kartikawati, a lecturer at the Criminology Department, University of Indonesia, said women’s vulnerability to cyber violence had increased because of the minimum infrastructure supporting capacity and low digital literacy. “Gender-based violence is difficult to handle because spreads rapidly without space and time limits, victims’ digital traces are hard to erase,” she added.

Victims will mostly be trapped in a feeling of guilt over their cases. Even not infrequently, they want to commit suicide and withdraw from social settings for fear of being defamed.

Psychologist Riliv Erwinda Tri Satya described the psychological impacts of online gender-based sexual violence as being varied. Victims are affected by stress, depression, traumas, anxieties and a suicidal tendency. (MED/DAN/MEL/SON)