The first complaints were received by the Cybercrime Prosecutor’s Office at the end of 2021. They reported that the particular link led to an online file storage and sharing service that collected photos and amateur videos of dozens of women’s sexual moments. No encryption was required to access this digital keyhole. He just had to click on the hyperlink.

Initially, a folder called “Patra” appeared. It contained 141 subfolders, corresponding to an equal number of women. They contained 1500 files. The first evidence pointed to a case of pornographic revenge. Who or who undertook to draw or collect all this material and so painstakingly systematize it? To unravel the thread, the police first needed to identify the victims.

Each of the 141 subfolders was allegedly named after the profile name each victim used on social media accounts such as Instagram. From the information currently available to “K” it is not yet clear why this particular tactic was chosen. Perhaps the intention was that whoever accessed the material would immediately find one of these women on the Internet, perhaps to impersonate her, blackmail her, or satisfy voyeuristic instincts.

Some of these names corresponded to nicknames, but some were real names. The first identifications of women showed that they were indeed in Achaia. The E-Crime Prosecutor’s Office sent the case to Patras so that, due to the location and the number of persons involved, the investigation conducted by the police there could continue and other victims could be searched.

The videos and photos were allegedly uploaded to a file storage service provided by New Zealand-based company Mega. According to police sources, the company’s assistance was requested to find the electronic traces of those involved in posting the material and then deactivate the link in question. This evidence reportedly led to the identification of four people in Athens. The prosecutor’s office first asked them to give explanations in person, as they had not yet been charged.

An email link posted online contained a link to 1,500 photo and video files.

It is unclear how the 1500 files were collected. However, police officers familiar with similar cases from the recent past explain that there are various channels on other apps, such as Telegram, where users share photos and videos of women. Perhaps someone or someone fished out these files and grouped them into a new list.

This possible scenario is also confirmed by K. testimony. A 25-year-old woman from Patras was recently told by acquaintances that there was also a folder with her data on this list. It contained material from her personal moments, which has been circulating on the Internet for many months. It all started, she tells in K, after she broke up with her partner. He first learned that the videos they made together were transferred from cell phone to cell phone. “When he asked me to film our intimate moments, I had no idea what was going to happen. I asked him to remove them, but he did not,” he says. A month later, he found the video on four different porn sites. “I sent emails to websites and they closed them, but then they reopened,” she says, asking not to be named. Along the way, her family also learned what had happened. “I got depressed, I couldn’t face anyone, I couldn’t even walk down the street. I am offended and angry, I feel that they will not justify me, ”she adds.

Some of those individual videos were even sent to her new employer when he hired her in the fall of 2021. “The senders were women. Their goal was to prevent the hiring of a girl in my business, ”he tells K.

Lawyer Antonis Xylourgidis is currently pursuing twelve cases of pornographic revenge, or more specifically, sexual assault through images. It highlights the impact of the publication of this material on the lives of the victims. “They are terrified at the thought of losing their anonymity and revealing their name. Especially when it comes to a person from a provincial town, Calvary is unstoppable. There is self-flagellation, embarrassment, shame, they lock themselves in their rooms, ”he tells K. “Following the exposure of all these women, as in the recent case of Patra, digital stoning follows. Moralists appear and comment that “he wanted them and got them”. They confuse the consent that may have existed for the download of material with an act of disclosure that takes place without the will of the victim.”

Some of these cases turn into a vicious circle: victims try for a long time to permanently delete videos and photos from the Internet, which are then displayed on other websites by themselves or other offenders. In one of the cases handled by Mr. Xilurgidis, the victim was asked to face repeated publication of relevant material through several false profiles created on Facebook and Instagram.

Mr. Xilurgidis notes that rapists in most cases have a “sick double plan.” “They start with the perception that a woman is their property, and when she doesn’t succumb to informal blackmail or their desires, they move on to threats of ridicule, humiliation, and finally reputational damage,” he says, adding that some of the criminals in them are also aimed at obtaining financial benefits from the dissemination of material. “For clicks or money, the offender turns his victim into prey. We can’t ignore the fact that a lot of people are buying these kind of videos.”

First he blackmailed her, and then… he discovered humanity

In July 2021, the Supreme Court was asked to hear an appeal filed by the defendant in the revenge pornography case. The five-member Piraeus Court of Appeal sentenced him to seven years in prison because he was found guilty of “continuously transferring personal data files with intent to harm a third party” and charged with engaging in continuous suicide. . The history of this particular case, recorded in court documents, testifies to the unbearable psychological pressure suffered by the victims. The rapist and the victim met in 2008 when he was 31 and she was 20. Their relationship lasted until 2013, when the wife asked for a divorce. When it later became known that she had started a relationship with another man, he reacted. “Unable to allow his previously faithful and devoted lover to lead an independent love life of his own, he allowed himself a flurry of insults, insults and threats,” the court said in the ruling. He told her that he would post a video of them having sex. She threatened that she would print the scenes from this material and post them in her neighborhood or send them to her workplace to blame her.

According to court documents, he sent messages to her, urging her to kill herself to avoid humiliation. In one of these messages, he wrote that he would make her “famous”, that her relatives would be embarrassed to leave the house, because the neighbors would “hang bells on them.” The woman made two suicide attempts within three months. Without her consent, porn sites ended up posting short videos edited in such a way that the man’s face was not visible.

Court documents describe a “manipulative” man who would not allow a woman to end a relationship and had an “almost obsessive tendency to ruin the life” of his victim. The man claimed that he did not make posts on the sites. He claimed that he had lost his mobile phone and that his computer had been “hacked”. However, what he mentioned was not believed, as there was no evidence to support it.

After his conviction by the Court of Appeal, he appealed to the Supreme Court, citing various grounds for appeal. One of them also concerned the rejection by the Court of Appeal of the extenuating circumstance of good conduct after the commission of the act. According to the appeal ruling, the defendant attempted to methodically organize his “defence” in the event of a conviction. He regularly made monetary donations to charitable organizations, in particular SOS Children’s Villages, “taking care to collect appropriate receipts and certificates for use in court.” However, his conduct was held to be hypocritical by the Court of Appeal, as he did not make the relevant movements prior to his actions. It even seemed that he did not care about her suffering. He paid her monetary compensation for non-pecuniary damage seven years after the videos were made public, only when the verdict was final. The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the appellate instance. The victim needed psychological support for many years.