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A man who threatened to post nude photos of a woman to social media has been ordered to pay her $5,000 in damages under a new B.C. law.
The award is among a handful of cases heard by B.C.’s civil resolution tribunal since the Intimate Images Protection Act passed five months ago to allow damages for victims of what’s sometimes called revenge porn. The law also allows persons to apply for protection orders that require posters and internet companies to remove the images from the web or face hefty fines until they do.
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The posting of images of people nude or nearly nude, whether real or faked by digitally attaching someone’s head to another’s body, without their consent is already a crime under the federal Criminal Code. But B.C.’s new law creates a way for wronged individuals to seek damages, which are rare in criminal cases.
In this latest instance, the woman, whose identity and photos are protected under the act and is referred to in the ruling as the “applicant,” had taken sexual images of her in her bedroom between 2019 and 2023, according to the decision.
There is no publication ban for the name of the respondent, Byron Sowinski, because the applicant said naming him wouldn’t indirectly identify her, adjudicator Andrea Ritchie wrote.
On Feb. 24, 2024, the woman and Sowinski, whom she had just met, and a third person who was a friend of them both, were hanging out at an apartment. Sowinski asked to use her phone to connect it to the TV to play music, according to the decision.
He then accessed her iCloud storage and texted himself several of her images, the ruling said.
When the applicant noticed the texts, she called Sowinski’s number, and in text messages, he apologized for taking the images without her consent and then offered to send her similar photos of himself, the decision said.
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He also said she should take it as a compliment.
Two days later, he texted her and threatened to post her pictures “all over social media” if he she told anyone he was “stealing” her photos, according to the decision.
Ritchie ruled she had viewed the photos and found they are “intimate images” as defined by the act and also found Sowinski had shared them without the applicant’s consent and also threatened to share them.
Sowinski didn’t offer any defence to the allegations before the tribunal, Ritchie wrote. He is therefore in default and “liability is assumed,” she wrote.
The new law entitles the applicant to damages up to $5,000 in total, the tribunal’s small claims limit, she wrote.
“The applicant says her privacy has been violated and she has suffered from sadness and depression as a result of the respondent’s conduct,” the adjudicator wrote. “She has lost the motivation to socialize and instead isolates herself.”
Ritchie found Sowinski “flagrantly ignored” the applicant’s right to personal privacy and autonomy, and his conduct after, offering to send her intimate photos and telling her what he would use them for, was “egregious.” And his further threat to widely broadcast them was “reprehensible,” she wrote.
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Ritchie wrote that if it weren’t for the legal limit, she wouldd have awarded far higher punitive damages “to punish the respondent for their reprehensible and disgusting conduct,” Ritchie wrote.
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