Bill would make S.C. last state in US to criminalize ‘revenge porn’

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - Right now, a person in South Carolina can share intimate images of someone else without their consent and face no criminal penalties.

That action is often called “revenge porn,” and experts have said it is probably much more common than people realize.

South Carolina stands alone in the country as the only state that has no law on the books targeting revenge porn, but legislation advancing at the State House would finally remove it from that list.

“Don’t get me wrong: People make bad decisions when letting themselves be photographed or taking photographs and sending them,” Rep. Chris Wooten, R – Lexington, said. “But we’ve all made bad decisions.”

Wooten, the lead sponsor of that bill, said at a recent House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on his legislation that those bad decisions can become dangerous ones.

“A lot of times, this is even how sex trafficking even comes from its infancy, from this portion of, ‘Well, you’re going to perform this for me, or I’m going to use this for blackmail.’ We’ve seen this in so many instances,” Wooten said.

Two years ago, South Carolina enacted a law criminalizing sexual extortion, which is when someone threatens to release private images of another person if that person does not do what they want, like pay them or perform certain acts.

But under that law, there must be blackmail involved; otherwise, it does not rise to the level of a crime in South Carolina.

“This bill would fill the gap, bringing clear penalties to those who engage in these harmful practices,” Rep. Travis Moore, R – Spartanburg, said of the revenge porn bill.

This bill would make it a crime to intentionally disseminate an intimate photo or video or a digitally forged intimate image of another person without their consent.

That includes AI-generated images made to look like real photos of an identifiable person.

Consenting to the creation of an intimate image or sharing it initially would not imply consent for its further dissemination.

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This legislation has been filed several times in past years but never made its way to the governor’s desk.

ers attribute that, more than anything, to people not realizing how common and how harmful revenge porn is.

“The trauma that goes with it — this stuff just doesn’t go away anymore. It stays online. It stays out there forever once it’s shared,” Wooten said. “Folks have even, as we know, the tragic events of folks even committing suicide because of the things that happen with this.”

If this legislation is enacted, people convicted could find themselves behind bars for years, and harsher penalties would be given to people who had harmful intentions or financial motivations.

Another bill before lawmakers this year would allow victims of revenge porn to sue the person who distributed the photos of them, which would put South Carolina among the first states in the nation to establish this civil cause of action.

Both bills have bipartisan and recently advanced out of a House Judiciary subcommittee, so they will next be up for consideration before the full House Judiciary Committee.

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