Men worst for online abuse in NZ

Men are the worst Kiwi offenders for online abuse and harassment, but a doctor has raised concerns that few of those convicted are receiving jail time or fines.

In the 2017/2018 year, 91 per cent of the 53 people convicted for an offence under the Harmful Digital Communications Act were men.

For the two respective years prior, the only years the act has been in effect, 86 per cent of the 42 convictions and 100 per cent of the 12 convictions were for men.

Netsafe chief executive Martin Cocker said the majority of prosecutions related to revenge porn cases. ‘‘Men are more likely to do that for the purpose of harming another person, and that’s probably reflected in the skew towards male offenders in the criminal space.’’

Massey University senior lecturer Dr Catherine Strong said the important statistic was the gender of the person who initiated the charges. ‘‘Because so many of the harmful digital offences are sexual abuse, it is likely the #MeToo movement has empowered women to report these crimes.’’

Digital footprints allow women more success in reporting abuse, and the act made it easier to file a complaint.

‘‘With digital evidence a woman doesn’t have to go through the humiliation of answering what she wore or what she was drinking, which is the case in physical abuse cases.

‘‘It is well known that the police balk at proceeding with charges against white men for physical sexual abuse crimes, because there is no absolute proof – no witnesses and no rolling cameras when a woman is abused. But in digital offences, the woman may be technically savvy enough to trace the offence and save the evidence.’’

However it was ‘‘odd’’ only 19 per cent of those convicted in the 2017/18 year were sentenced to imprisonment, and only 8 per cent received a fine. ‘‘It’ll be interesting to see if these lower-level penalties deter recidivism in the future.’’

Kerry Bevin, spokesman for the Men’s Affairs Group, said the high percentage of convictions ‘‘reflects issues like custody in the family court ... and the #MeToo campaign’’.

‘‘You now have lots of volatile women throwing their weight around with all sorts of accusations, most of which are untrue,’’ Bevin said. ‘‘Men are backing off because of decades of abuse and that digital thing ... is just set against that whole background.

‘‘Whether they’re males or females, people when they’re under emotional pressure and disturbance in their lives, they often do lash out for a while, it’s a perfectly natural reaction ... but hopefully after a while most of them do get a bit grounded.’’

Pa¯keha¯ people also made up the majority of convictions, with 79 per cent of the 53 offenders from 2017/18 being of European ethnicity. However, reasons for this were unclear.

Detective Sergeant Damian Rapira-Davies of cybercrime investigations said embarrassment and peer pressure could be reasons people didn’t want to report incidents. ‘‘We have seen male and female offenders from a range of ethnicities; including cases where the victim knows the offender and others where the victim has been targeted by an acquaintance or someone they didn’t know very well.’’

‘‘Because so many of the harmful digital offences are sexual abuse, it is likely the #MeToo movement has empowered women to report these crimes.’’ Massey University senior lecturer Dr Catherine Strong