Kanyi Okeke
Henry Alibah, has been jailed for six months by an Accra Circuit Court for posting nude pictures of his former girlfriend on Facebook. Alibah is said to have taken that decision after his ex-girlfriend had informed him she wanted to quit their two-year relationship.
The 24-year-old student who determined to revenge and posted naked photos of his ex-girlfriend and labelled them as “Porn star, pay and ****”. He also included her phone number in his revenge posting. Handing down the sentence the trial judge, Ms Ellen Vivian Amoah, said it took into consideration the nature of the offence, how the offence was committed and the fact that the accused person was first offender. She said the social media platform in recent times had been used to inflict emotional and psychological pain on people adding the most affected were women and girls.
According to the court posting of nude pictures which it also referred to as a cyber bully had also been used by people as a form of black mail, noting that, in the case before it, the intent of the convict was to use revenge pornography as a form of black mail. Ms Amoah said posting of nude pictures by perpetrators was often trivialised by the society pointing out that the suffering and social degradation of victims were overlooked.
“With over 1.11 billion users of Facebook, such acts could easily pop through the click of the button of the mouse,” she said. According to the court Ghana was not immuned to revenge pornography and it was time for the court to act now in order to curb the menace.
