Review reveals almost 100 cases prosecuted under Coco’s Law

Michael Bolton

Almost 100 cases have been prosecuted since Coco’s Law came into effect.

A review by Minister for Justice Helen McEntee shows 99 cases have been prosecuted under the legislation, which criminalises the sharing of, or threatening to share intimate images, without a person's consent.

Coco's Law was named after Nicole 'Coco’ Fox, who died by suicide following years of abuse and harassment online.

The review also found the number of charges issued by gardaí has risen year-on-year.

Research shows the number of people who thought it was against the law to share intimate images has jumped from 69 per cent in 2021 to 97 per cent in 2023.

The review found that between September 2021 and December 2023, almost 1,500 reports were made to Hotline.ie which, after assessment, were found to be intimate image abuse.

Some 1,006 of these were images or videos shared without the person’s consent via publicly accessible web-locations and Hotline.ie was able to get 92 per cent removed.

Hotline.ie also received more than 400 reports relating to threat to share intimate images.

This included 366 cases of sexual extortion and 27 threats to share intimate images for harassment purposes.

Speaking on the review, Ms McEntee said: “Making people aware of this legislation was – and continues to be – a major focus for us, and our awareness campaigns on intimate image abuse have been successful.

“I know that An Garda Síochána anticipates that the numbers of prosecutions will continue to rise as further reports are received and criminal investigations then progress.

“We wanted to make reporting intimate image abuse as easy as possible for as many victims as possible, and that has been successful. The removal rate by Hotline.ie is very encouraging, particularly as so much of this content is found to be hosted outside Ireland.

“It is of course open to anyone who wishes to make a report directly to the Gardaí to do so, and I would encourage anyone who has been a victim of intimate image abuse to take that step.”