Social media, cyberspace, and sex crime
Maggie Wykes · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2017
This essay considers the nature of offences involving social media. These include topics such as sexting, revenge porn, grooming, cyberstalking, and sexual harassment which have all become more common ‘sex crimes’ in the age of the digital. The essay explores whether there is any relationship between cyber-sex content or contact and real sexual harm. The author asks whether this is a new form of offending; whether it is old crime that is newly transacted, fashioned, and experienced; or whether it is really crime at all. Even though the focus of much concern with social media sex is ‘stranger danger’, in most cases assailants are actually known to the victim.