Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito Hopeful That Massachusetts Will Outlaw Revenge Porn This Year
By Tom Joyce | August 5, 2022, 12:21 EDT
When it comes to revenge porn, Massachusetts is close to a national outler.
The Bay State is one of just two states that hasn’t banned what’s known as revenge porn — along with South Carolina.
Revenge pornography consists of “sexually explicit images of a person posted online without that person’s consent especially as a form of revenge or harassment,” according to Merriam-Webster dictionary’s web site.
Banning revenge porn been a legislative priority for Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and lieutenant governor Karyn Polito over the past several years. A proposed ban hasn’t become law, but this year is the closest legislators have come to making it happen.
On May 26, the Massachusetts House of Representatives voted 154-0 to approve a bill (H.4498) sponsored by the House Ways and Means Committee that would ban revenge porn; it would make revenge porn offenses subject to the state’s criminal harassment laws. That carries a penalty of up to 2 1/2 years in prison and/or a fine of up to $10,000. The bill offers a less strict punishment for minors: a fine of up to $500 and up to six months in a juvenile correctional facility.
And while the Massachusetts legislature’s formal sessions came to an end early Monday, August 1, lieutenant governor Polito is still optimistic that a ban could become law before she and Baker leave office at the end of the year.
A NewBostonPost reporter asked Polito about the administration’s legislative priority during an interview on the Plymouth Town Hall Lawn on Tuesday morning.
“The sexually explicit visual materials and revenge porn is a very important priority, especially to the governor’s council to address sexual assault and domestic violence,” Polito told NewBostonPost on Tuesday, August 2. “We’ve advanced this bill. As you’ve noted, 48 other states have adopted a revenge porn law, and Massachusetts is a laggard and needs to do so. I know the legislature has taken it seriously. They’ve held hearings and we’re at the state now where it really ought to pass and get done. My hope is that in the informal session, they can see this passed into law and get it to the governor’s desk so we can take action on it.”
The House revenge porn bill has not yet come up for a vote in the Senate.
And Senate President Karen Spilka (D-Ashland) has been noncommittal about bringing it up for a vote by the end of the year.
“We’ll have to see,” Spilka told WCVB last week. “There’s several bills that senators want to take up. There’s a lot of things on the horizon. There’s a lot of things the Senate has done that we’re hoping the House takes up as well. As you all noted, time is short, to be blunt. So we’ll continue working, but I know we are looking at a lot of great bills and we’ll get done and we’ll get to the floor of the Senate and to the governor’s desk as many as we possibly can.”
Spilka made those remarks Monday, July 25, while formal sessions of the Senate and House were still going on, before the July 31 deadline. Passing a bill during formal sessions requires a simple majority of each chamber.
The legislature can also pass legislation during so-called informal sessions between now and early January 2023, but it takes only one legislator to end consideration of a bill. Therefore, bills need generally need unanimous support. Generally, only non-controversial bills pass during informal sessions.
The 2021-2022 legislative session is the third straight session Baker and Polito have pushed for a ban on revenge porn, dating back to 2017. However, this session marks the first time a bill has come up for a vote in either chamber.
A 2014 study by the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative showed that 93 percent of revenge porn victims have suffered “significant” emotional distress and 41 percent have contemplated suicide. The study also found that 90 percent of the victims of revenge porn are women.
Defendants in revenge porn cases have argued that revenge porn ought to be covered by freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment of the federal constitution. So far, those arguments have not been upheld by courts.
Spilka’s office could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday this week.
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