Three weeks hardly seems enough, but Nathan Broad’s punishment for image-based abuse is a start
THREE weeks of no football will be seen by many as inadequate given the pain Nathan Broad has caused but it is a start, writes Wendy Tuohy.
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NATHAN Broad’s punishment for distributing a picture of a topless girl without consent sends the message we need to hear: the harms caused by image-based sexual abuse are real, and images can never be shared without full permission.
Broad appeared honesty remorseful, he is also fortunate the victim requested Victoria Police call off the investigation into the sharing of the image.
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The footballer could have been given up to two years’ jail.
Some will argue three games is nowhere near enough for the distress caused by his selfish decision to share an image he dishonestly told the victim had been deleted (as she asked).
Yes, young people including footballers are living in a world where technology makes potentially devastating actions frighteningly easy to commit, but no adult using it — let alone social media trained footballers — could still be unaware sharing explicit images without consent is illegal and can cause untold damage to the victim.
Victims of the non-consensual sharing of their explicit images, known as image-based abuse, have suffered real and lasting mental health issues, as shown by 2017 RMIT and Monash University research.
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The survey of 4300 Australians aged 16 to 49 showed high levels of depression among victims.
The older generation “so just keep your top on” mob have no understanding of how young people communicate.
Whether older people approve or not, young people commonly share explicit images with sexual partners.
It is part of their online atmosphere.
But the knowledge that it is never OK to share those with people other than the person intended to receive that image is also well known.
Breaking the trust of the young woman, and victims are almost all female, and distributing images is a violation.
Like any sexual violation, there can be huge repercussions in the life of the young person, as there no doubt have been in the case of the young woman whose topless image Broad shared.
To see people turn on the victim in this case has not been surprising, as the good old “she was asking for it” is still so often wheeled out to minimise sexual offences across the spectrum.
But speculation about her motives or anything else to do with her must stop here: and Broad acting to take full responsibility and accepting the strong punishment of three games’ suspension in the 2018 season will help.
The young person involved here should be left to recover, and hopefully the massive profile given to Broad’s “drunken” mistake will help spare other young women from undergoing the pain, humiliation and anguish this has caused her.
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