From CBC News:
Sharing intimate images without consent was the focus of Friday’s International Women’s Day flag-raising event in Thunder Bay, Ont.
The keynote address, delivered by social worker Karen Slomke, was in response to an ongoing cyber crime investigation in the northwestern Ontario city. More than a dozen people were charged last month with 172 offences related to the distribution of intimate images without consent, using an online chat platform.
“The images themselves are not the issue, unless they were attained through extortion,” Slomke said during the event at City Hall. “It is the violation of ownership, privacy and consent that has caused and continues to cause harm.”
Gwen O’Reilly is the executive director of the Northwestern Ontario Women’s Centre, which hosted Friday’s event. O’Reilly said she invited Slomke to speak because she wanted to help prevent these incidents from occurring.
“The widespread distribution of images of women is something that’s being normalized, and there doesn’t seem to be any particular organized effort to stop it,” O’Reilly said.
While cyber crime was the main theme of Friday’s event, advocate Ardelle Sagutcheway also raised her voice about the problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, who are six times more likely to be murdered than other groups of people in Canada.
Read the full article here
Read more:
- History of International Women’s Day
- VIDEO: International Women’s Day flag raised at City Hall (TBT Newswatch, March 2025)
- ‘We are not going to be silent’: International Women’s Day flag raised at city hall (TBT Newswatch, March 7 2025)
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