Local porn site continues to torment women

When a new Facebook account with Emily Singh’s name and picture sprung up and began ‘adding’ people, her actual friends thought it was a little strange.
It was even stranger for Singh (not her real name); she hadn’t set up a new Facebook profile.
In a vicious, targeted attack, her ex- husband set up the spoof account with her details, and posted explicit, intimate sexual pictures they had taken together- then invited all of her friends and family to see them.
Within two days, the pictures of Singh had also appeared on a local porn site, and had been viewed nearly 1300 times. This was in January 2013.
Like the increasing number of people affected by the site, Singh was stunned by what had happened to her.
Her life was “turned upside-down,” she said.
She had to report each of the eight photos individually to Facebook, and ask for them to be removed. The profile was eventually deleted.
While the pictures were taken down from the social media site, the operator for the local porn website has ignored her pleas. Today, nude photos of her still dot the internet.

“It is sick that these kinds of things happen and there is nowhere you can go to report it. When it first happened to me, I was so depressed. I spoke with a police friend of mine and he told me that the police cannot tackle cyber crime,” Singh said.
She explained that it was devastating for her to accept the fact that nude pictures of her are out there and the police couldn’t do anything to help her.
The local porn site came into the limelight in August 2015 when several women called this newspaper and explained that their pictures were being stolen from Facebook, photo shopped and posted on the site.
The information was handed over to police but nothing was done. When news of the porn site first appeared in the media, it was hurriedly taken down for a few days but was subsequently reopened.
In August last year, a Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara (ECD) woman had claimed that a man who had befriended her on a social media website a few months earlier, downloaded pictures of her, photo-shopped them and posted the pictures to the local pornographic site.
Thirty-three other women, including teenagers around Guyana have also reported that they too have had the same experience.
Some say that their pictures were stolen from Facebook and Instagram and their faces were cropped and placed on nude bodies.
Two senior police officials had confirmed that the complaints were received but to date an update of what action was taken cannot be given.
It is unclear whether any investigation was done.
One police official had said that the matter was brought to his attention in May last year.
“One young lady came into us and said that her pictures were not only stolen and posted on the site, but they were also photo-shopped onto a nude body,” the police official said.
He added, “The young lady told us that she suspects an individual and she provided us with photographs and a telephone number for that person, but when we tried to contact the individual, his phone was turned off.”
This information was also given to the Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum, who promised to look into it.
These incidents come at a time when Guyana is moving to get in line with the rest of the world with regard to tackling cyber crime.