Thanks to the initiative of the BaBe association and more than 9,400 citizens who supported petition, revenge pornography will become a separate criminal offense in Croatia. Minister Malenica announced for HTV that the unauthorized publication of private, explicit photos, videos or other content will be considered a criminal offense punishable by one to three years in prison.
Although the Draft Proposal for Amendments to the Criminal Code, which was the subject of a public discussion on e-consultation, did not envisage this as a separate criminal offense, after a discussion organized by the BaBe association in April and a proposal by the BaBe association, which was supported by experts, the Ministry of Justice and Administration decided to include a new Article 144a in the Criminal Code, which will also define a new criminal offense of misuse of recordings of sexually explicit content.
In April, the BaBe association organized, as part of the SURF and SOUND project, multisectoral workshop on the topic "Legal regulation of non-consensual pornography", which was attended by 40 experts. The discussion resulted in the conclusion that revenge pornography should definitely be defined as a separate criminal offense, and the BaBe association submitted a proposal as part of the public consultation on April 21st.
On May 24, 2021, at the initiative of the BaBe association a working meeting was held in the premises of the Ministry of Justice and Administration with representatives of the Ministry. The meeting was attended on behalf of the Ministry by the Assistant Minister and Director of the Criminal Law Directorate, Vedrana Šimundža-Nikolić, the Head of the Sector for Criminal Law Regulations, Ana Kordej, and the Head of the Service for Criminal Substantive Law Regulations, Marlena Jukić, as well as the coordinator of the BaBe association, Zdravka Sadžakov, the lawyer and external associate of the association, Ines Bojić, and the coordinator of the SURF and SOUND project, Dean Šarčević.
The SURF and SOUND project, which focuses on the fight against online violence against women and is co-financed by the European Union, started in March. In addition to the previously mentioned multi-sector discussion, the work of a free counseling center was made possible as part of the project. So far, more than 30 consultations have been provided, and an increase in the number of people who are victims of revenge pornography has been observed.
We expect that the proposal will be adopted at the session in the coming days. Government of the Republic of Croatia, and then submit the amendments to the Criminal Code to the representatives of the Croatian Parliament.
The signatures of support you submitted through the petition 'Stop revenge porn!' https://www.change.org/OsvetnickaPornografija we will forward it to the members of Parliament
