Stand Informed-Intimate Images Legal Advice pilot project: A New, Free Legal Advice Service if Your Private Photos or Videos were Shared Without Your Permission in British Columbia.

By Aditi Master, Lawyer, and Angela Leung, Coordinator, Stand Informed Legal Advice Service, Community Legal Assistance Society.

Today, taking photos or videos and sharing them with family, friends and intimate partners is as easy as pressing a button on your phone. Every day, we exchange information about ourselves through images we share in chats and on social media. Swapping photos, including private, intimate sexual photos of ourselves, is commonplace in dating apps and relationships.

Unfortunately, this ease of taking and sharing images has seen the rise of sharing intimate images of people (i.e., “nudes”) without their permission, or consent.

This used to be an issue mostly involving celebrities making “sex tapes”, or fake images, now AI generated “deepfakes.” These videos or images were stolen or leaked on to the internet (Taylor Swift, Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian to name a few). This is no longer the exclusive problem of celebrities. Instances of revenge porn, sextortion, voyeurism, intimate partners forwarding images from sexting to their friends in messenger apps are all increasing.

In 2020, Statistics Canada reported an 80% increase in incidents reported to police of intimate images being shared without the consent of the person in the images (“non-consensual sharing”), compared to the previous five years. Between 2014 and 2020, 48% of youth victims of non-consensual sharing of intimate images were victimized by an intimate partner or a friend. For more than 36% of youth victims, the person who shared the images was a casual acquaintance (Statistics Canada, 2020).

So, what do you do when someone shares intimate images of you without your permission? What can you do if someone threatens to share these intimate images with everyone you know unless you give into their demands?

To help individuals in British Columbia learn about their legal rights and options, Community Legal Assistance Society (CLAS) has introduced a new pilot project through its Stand Informed Legal Advice Services – Intimate Images Legal Advice Project.

It is a new pilot service through Stand Informed Legal Advice Services, which provides free, brief and confidential legal advice to anyone in British Columbia – including newcomers, international students and temporary foreign workers. The project is funded by the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia, and the service is available from August 2024 until March 2025.

Our lawyer can provide up to 3 hours of free, confidential legal advice to anyone in British Columbia who has experienced the sharing of their intimate images without their consent or been threatened with having their intimate images shared. Our lawyer will explain your rights and the legal options available to you.

You will not be charged any fees for our services. You do not need to report to the police to use our services. What you decide to do is completely up to you.

This new service is available if you live in British Columbia, and someone has shared or threatened to share your intimate images that you expected would be kept private, without your consent. You do not need know the person who shared your intimate images to access this service. There are no age restrictions.

You can contact us by calling 604-673-3143 or Toll-free 1-888-685-6222, or emailing standinformed@clasbc.net. You can also fill out the application for legal services and email it to us.

After you contact us, our Intake Coordinator will have a short call with you to find out about what happened. You can tell your story in as much detail as you are comfortable with. You are welcome to have a support worker, trusted adult, or friend on the call if it will help you feel safe and comfortable. We can also provide an interpreter if English is not your first language, or for ASL interpretation. We try to make our services as accessible as possible. If you have any accommodation needs, please let us know and we will do our best to help you.

If you qualify for our services, a short agreement will be sent to you that explains the relationship between you, your lawyer, and Stand Informed-Intimate Images Legal Advice. The agreement explains your lawyer-client relationship and protects the privacy of your discussions with us and the lawyer. After you sign the agreement, our lawyer will contact you to set up a meeting. You may meet the lawyer over the phone, by video, or possibly in person. If you prefer a certain type of meeting, you can let us know.

If English is not your first language, we can provide a free interpreter for all meetings with your lawyer.

We know the idea of talking to a lawyer can feel intimidating. You can talk with our lawyer directly about your situation or have a support worker accompany you. You decide what you do and don’t want to do.

Our lawyer can provide you with legal advice on your situation and answer your questions. Our lawyer can explain what you can expect in a legal process and answer your questions. For example, our lawyer can:

Stand Informed staff and lawyers are trained to take a holistic, trauma-informed approach to assist you. This means we understand that what you have experienced is traumatic, and we see you as more than just your legal issue; you are not defined by what happened to you.

You can contact us by calling 604-673-3143 or Toll-free 1-888-685-6222 or emailing standinformed@clasbc.net. Visit our website to find out more.