A Spanish judge finds that no crime was committed by secretly filming women urinating in public and then posting those images on porn sites. The decision not to prosecute is very surprising. And not just among the victims.
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The women filmed were at the A Maruxaina festival in northwestern Spain in August 2019. There were too few toilets, where many women felt compelled to urinate in public. In the course of 2020, eighty women found out that they had been secretly filmed during the act and that the images – showing their genitals and faces – were circulating on various (paid) porn sites. They then filed a lawsuit because their right to privacy had been violated.
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Judge Pablo Muñoz Vázquez has now decided not to hear the criminal case, “because the footage was shot in a public place and is therefore not punishable,” writes the BBC. Moreover, according to the judge, it was ‘not the intention to violate the physical or moral resistance’ of the affected women. The women could still file a civil case.
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“I find it so frustrating. They basically say it’s okay if someone films you on the street, posts it on a porn site and makes money from it,” says Jennifer, one of the victims. Ana García of the feminist platform Mujeres and Igualdad tells the local newspaper The voice of Galicia that the women feel ‘humiliated and ashamed’. She warns that the ruling could set a precedent, allowing videographers of this type of footage to go free. “Just because you’re in a public space doesn’t mean filming and distributing intimate footage is okay. This is about fundamental rights.”
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Women are now protesting online under the banner of #XustizaMaruxaina. The Spanish minister for equality, Irene Montero, also expressed her astonishment about the case on Twitter. “A woman on the street or in public space still has her right to privacy. Taking pictures of a woman without her consent and distributing them is sexual assault.”
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The affected women are now trying to get their case heard through a higher court.
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Irene Montero
@IreneMontero
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