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Someone You Know Is Already Living This

A college freshman gets a Google alert on her own name and finds out why. A father learns his 13-year-old is in a group chat where boys are trading fake nudes of girls in her grade. A woman recognizes her own face on a site she's never visited, in a video she never made.

None of them knew the word for what was happening to them

That's the first problem we're here to solve.

This page is where you start if you want to actually understand image-based sexual abuse: what it is, what it isn't, who's writing about it, and what the biggest cases of the last few years actually tell us. Not the version that gets flattened into a headline. The real shape of it.

The Harms Wheel & The Healing Wheel

What survivors carry, and what they need to heal

We created these two wheels based on the lived experiences of survivors and their advocates. The Harms Wheel names what image-based sexual abuse takes from a person. The Healing Wheel names what it takes to heal.

Both are free to download and share, in a training, a classroom, a counseling office, or anywhere survivors deserve to be understood.

The Harms Wheel

What survivors of image-based sexual abuse actually carry, drawn from survivor stories, data, and casework in our 2023 global report.

Download (JPG): The Harms WheelView Full Size: The Harms Wheel (opens in a new tab)
Read the wheel as text
  1. 01 Mental health. Depression, anxiety, PTSD, and for over half of survivors, thoughts of suicide.
  2. 02 Isolation. Lost friendships and family, and blame from the people closest to her.
  3. 03 Academic & career loss. Missed classes, changed schools, dropped degrees, stalled careers.
  4. 04 Financial hardship. Thousands spent removing her own images, sometimes her abuser’s legal fees too.
  5. 05 Ongoing exposure. Images that resurface for years. The threat never fully goes away.
  6. 06 Intersecting violence. Often tied to assault, stalking, domestic violence, or sextortion.
  7. 07 Barriers to justice. Abusers are rarely charged. Survivors often carry the burden of proof.
  8. 08 Shame & identity. Public humiliation. Some change names, schools, even countries to escape it.

The Healing Wheel

What we needed to heal, and what every survivor deserves. Shaped by our 2023 report and the care DIF offers today.

Download (JPG): The Healing WheelView Full Size: The Healing Wheel (opens in a new tab)
Read the wheel as text
  1. 01 Image removal and monitoring. Free help finding and taking down images, and watching for them to come back.
  2. 02 Trauma-informed therapy. Counseling from licensed clinical therapists trained in understanding image-based sexual abuse.
  3. 03 Legal support. Help and accompaniment by an advocate when making police reports, filing protection orders, restitution, civil cases and more.
  4. 04 Confidential advocate. One person, at no cost to the survivor, who will be with them through the processes of law, protection, technology and healing.
  5. 05 Belief & accountability. And holding the people who exploit and profit responsible.
  6. 06 Privacy & control. Survivors have assurance that their abuse content, as they report it for removal, stays private. They can see how their case is progressing.
  7. 07 Knowing their rights. Simple, clear answers about the process and their options for safety and protection, as well as civil and criminal relief.
  8. 08 Belief & accountability. Being believed the first time. And holding the people who profit responsible, not her.

Source: I Didn’t Consent: A Global Landscape Report on Image-Based Sexual Abuse, Panorama Global / the Image-Based Sexual Abuse Initiative, 2023.

We didn't have this page when we needed it. That's exactly why it exists now.

If this is happening to you right now, you don't need to read any of this first →

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