Police failing to investigate image-based abuse, research shows, prompting super-complaint

The research, reported by The Guardian, gathered evidence from 100 people who reported intimate images being shared online without their consent. It suggests image-based abuse is still frequently dismissed or not recognised as criminal offending, despite former prime minister Keir Starmer describing it as a national emergency. Image-based abuse is defined in the complaint as the taking, sharing or creating of intimate content without the survivor's consent, or threatening to do so.

Referrals to the Revenge Porn Helpline, a charity that helps victims get non-consensual images removed from the internet, increased by more than 4,000% between 2015 and 2025. Home Office data shows there were only 569 charges issued for image-based abuse in 2025/2026. The helpline received almost 25,000 reports in 2025.

Researchers found that some police officers responded inappropriately when women tried to register complaints. One woman said the officer 'almost giggled on the phone to me'. Another said the officer responded: 'Boys will be boys.' Another said: 'I bet you've learned your lesson.' Image-based abuse overwhelmingly affects women and girls, who make up 98.9% of reported images.

Lawyers from Leigh Day and the charity the Centre for Women's Justice are working with the charity #NotYourPorn to highlight systemic police failings in responding to image-based abuse. They note that rapid innovations in AI are helping abusers find new ways to create and disseminate synthetic explicit material, sometimes known as deepfake content. Their research classifies the policing response as 'fragmented, inconsistent and incapable of meeting the scale of the threat posed by image-based abuse'.

'Despite the increased public awareness, and the creation of new criminal offences designed to address this conduct, there has been no corresponding increase in charging rates, prosecutions or convictions,' the complaint says. 'The unavoidable conclusion is that the overwhelming majority of this offending goes unaddressed.'

Researchers found that the vast majority of survivors did not report the abuse to police, citing embarrassment, shame and fear. In many cases, police outsourced evidence-gathering to survivors, leaving them to work out how to collate proof that images were being disseminated widely and how to get the content removed from the internet. One woman told researchers: 'It felt like to them it wasn't a priority, it wasn't even a crime.' Another said: 'Police involvement has not alleviated the harm caused by this offence. Instead, it has intensified my distress and left me feeling powerless and completely unsupported as a victim.'

A police super-complaint is a mechanism introduced in 2018 to allow concerns to be raised about ways in which the police operate that may significantly harm the interests of the public generally, rather than focusing on an individual force or officer. The complaint will be jointly considered by the College of Policing and the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which will decide whether to respond by opening a wider investigation.

Harriet Bland, a lawyer with the Centre for Women's Justice, said: 'Without an urgent overhaul of police guidance and training on image-based abuse – which must be regularly updated – and a clear national strategy rolled out across forces, survivors will continue to be let down.'