The Malta Chamber of Psychologists (MCP) has reacted to the distressing reports of a young woman's private video footage being shared without her consent, saying that it was an act of abuse.

The Chamber noted that the video was even projected on a screen for the entertainment of a group of men. Lovin Malta had reported that Siggiewi FC players were seen laughing at a Maltese woman's leaked intimate video projected on a screen while dining at a restaurant. This resulted in the club losing its sponsor and the coach resigning. 

The Chamber of Psychologists said: "Gender, power and control are at the very heart of image-based abuse. A report on such abuse in Australia, New Zealand and the UK found that the two main perpetrator motives were control and misogyny (McGlynn et al., 2019). Image-based abuse motivated by control is often a way to continue abuse even once a relationship has ended. On the other hand, when image-based abuse is motivated by misogyny and masculine entitlement, it is a symptom of lad culture, where women are viewed as sexual objects to be conquered. In this show of toxic masculinity, image-based abuse is but a way for men to keep score of their conquests."

"One of the myths around image-based abuse is that it is relatively harmless, since we're talking of 'just photos' or 'just videos'. This is far from the truth. Consent matters. Sharing images of a sexual nature is distressing, because it violates our bodily autonomy, our expectations that we get to decide who sees or touches our bodies, and in what way. In fact, the experience of image-based abuse can be so distressing that women interviewed about such experiences reported effects similar to those commonly reported by rape victims (Bates, 2016; McGlynn et al., 2019). This has led to such experiences as having been labelled as 'a new type of sexual assault' or even 'cyber rape'."

The Chamber said that we must uniformly condemn any form of sexual violence, including image-based abuse, and work towards eradicating them. "But in order to solve any problem, we must first acknowledge that it exists. We must acknowledge that we live in a country where as recently as in the year 2017, one out of five people believed that it was justifiable to rape a woman if she is wearing sexy clothes (Special Eurobarometer 449), and what this says about attitudes towards women's right to express their sexuality without losing their right to their bodily autonomy."

"However, the fact that this leaked video is being talked about, shows that our society is already changing. The resignation of the coach of the football club which participated in sharing of the video in a restaurant also suggests more serious condemnation of image-based abuse. These are hopeful signs that our society is starting to move towards condemning violations of consent and bodily autonomy the way they should be condemned. We must continue to be clear that all people have the right to decide what happens to their body, including any images and videos of it, and that spreading such material without consent is not funny, harmless or manly; it is an act of abuse, and must be unilaterally condemned."