Almost 100 Cases Prosecuted Under Coco’s Law.

Almost 100 cases prosecuted under Coco’s Law have now been published.

• Legislation criminalising the sharing of, or threatening to share intimate images without a person’s consent, and distributing, publishing or sending a threatening or grossly offensive communication to another person, introduced in 2021 has been reviewed.
• Almost 100 cases have been prosecuted by the DPP over the review period, with charges from An Garda Síochána increasing year-on-year.
• Success of national awareness campaigns in informing public of the legislation.

An operational review of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, also known as ‘Coco’s Law’ (named after Nicole ‘Coco’ Fox), shows that almost 100 cases have been prosecuted since it came into effect.

The legislation criminalises the sharing of, or threatening to share intimate images, without a person’s consent, with or without intent to cause harm to the victim.

The Act also seeks to target other areas of harmful communications by creating a new offence of distributing, publishing, or sending a threatening or grossly offensive communication with intent to cause harm and to extend the current offence of harassment to deal with communications about a person, as well as communications to a person.

The review was carried out by the Department of Justice and found positive early indicators in terms of prosecutions taken, the number of reports of intimate image abuse made to a hotline for illegal content, and general awareness of the legislation.

The review found that the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions had taken a total of 99 cases in respect of section 2, 3 or 4 of the Act, between its commencement and the end of 2023.
This included:

1. A total of 23 cases prosecuted on indictment in the Circuit Court.
2. The DPP consented to summary disposal on guilty plea for eight cases.
3. The DPP directed summary disposal on 68 cases.
4. One case was prosecuted on indictment in the Central Criminal Court.

The review also found that the number of charges issued by An Garda Síochána had risen between commencement in 2021 and the end of 2023. In 2021, there were 22 charges brought. In 2022, that rose to 95, and in 2023 it rose again to 113.

The review noted independent research from August 2021, which found that 69% thought it was against the law to share intimate images without consent, and 51% thought it was against the law to threaten to share intimate images.

A follow up piece of research conducted in November 2023 found that those figures had jumped to 97% and 96%, after the public awareness campaign.

As part of the awareness campaign, the Department of Justice partnered with Hotline.ie to provide a widely accessible reporting mechanism for victims of intimate image abuse. Once illegal content is reported to Hotline, their experts assess the report and decide on next steps.

Any online service provider served by Hotline.ie with an intimate image abuse notice is responsible for removing the content at source.

The review found that, between September 2021 and December 2023, almost 1,500 reports were made to Hotline.ie, which, after assessment, were found to be intimate image abuse.

Some 1,006 of these were images or videos shared without the person’s consent via publicly accessible web-locations;. Hotline.ie was able to get 92% removed.

Hotline.ie also received more than 400 reports relating to threat to share intimate images. This included 366 cases of sexual extortion and 27 threats to share intimate images for harassment purposes.