Debate contribution: Tackling Online Violence Against Women and Girls

Debate contribution by Ms Connie Egan on 14 January 2025.

MLA

Ms Connie Egan

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

14 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Tackling Online Violence Against Women and Girls

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4736386

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I rise again to speak about the horrendous violence facing women in Northern Ireland, in the rest of the UK and much further afield. Online spaces, apps and social media have become part of our everyday life. We use them every day, whether for work or for connecting with friends and family. I know, however, that I am not the only person in the Chamber who has sincere and deeply felt concerns about how spaces on the internet are being used to torment, humiliate and cause harm to women and girls.

In 2021, research exposed that one in three women in the UK has experienced online abuse at some point in her life. That is only being compounded, and we need to act quickly. I sincerely thank the SDLP and Cara Hunter, in particular, for shining a light on this, particularly deepfake imagery. I commend her bravery for speaking on this topic. It is something that I know is deeply personal to her. I also thank Diane Forsythe, who shared her experience of being targeted with online abuse during the 2022 Assembly election. Both are horrendous experiences that should not have happened and that they should not have had to endure. I stand here to present the amendment, not at all to dilute the contents of the motion but, instead, to try to strengthen its place within the Executive's ongoing work on the strategic framework to end violence against women and girls. Responsibility for tackling the online abuse of women and girls lies across the entirety of our Executive, and tackling this horrific misogyny is something that our Justice Minister has prioritised since taking office. We must work together on this cross-cutting issue, not just by creating robust legislation that criminalises such heinous acts but by taking a whole-society approach to change the growing culture of acceptance. We need to show leadership, embed prevention, deter those who create this imagery and protect victims. Additionally, the amendment seeks to recognise that online communication is a reserved matter and that it should be placed with the First Minister and deputy First Minister, on behalf of the Executive, to liaise with the UK Government to ensure that changes are made as quickly as possible. I hope that Members across the Chamber will support the amendment. The current legislative frameworks that deal with emerging forms of online abuse are clearly unfit for purpose and not victim-centred. We need coherent and unified legislation that is aimed at online activity. As the motion reflects, we welcome the recent commitments from the UK Government to introduce legislation on deepfake imagery, particularly deepfake pornography. Artificial intelligence has grown and learnt at an alarming pace, becoming more and more accessible to the everyday person each year. It has become extremely sophisticated, and, through that, it is hard to decipher what is real and what is not. The hyperrealistic falsification of images, video and audio poses a sincere threat to how we perceive and protect what is real. Between 2022 and 2023, the amount of deepfake pornography created increased by 464%. That quickening pace of development does not have adequate legislation to get ahead of it. The issue of deepfakes, as the motion correctly infers, is entirely gendered, with 96% of deepfakes online being non-consensual fake videos of women. It is one of the most recent ways to degrade, humiliate and harass women online. We all have a role to ensure that legislation and its accompanying actions are victim-centred. Its being funnelled and coordinated through the ending violence against women and girls programme board will allow a coordinated approach that results in long-lasting culture change. Right now, instead, we see organisations in the community and voluntary sector, such as Women's Aid, Nexus and all those in our communities, bear the brunt and consequences and the impact that this has on victims. We need comprehensive legislation, and we need to work with the UK Government to get increased detail on the contents of their proposed law. Also, in light of our shortened mandate, working with the UK Government is the best and most effective way to create change. We need a consistent approach, because, all in all, this is about ending the exploitation and abuse of power to punish people, usually women and children, for merely daring to exist. The solutions cannot be asking women to change their behaviour or just not engage online, as that makes us complicit in taking away the autonomy of those across our society. We need to permeate prevention across our culture, changing it to one that overwhelmingly finds this unacceptable.

771 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:47 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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