If someone shares an intimate image of you without your consent, you can ask the court for an order to have it taken down.
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Did you notice an intimate image of you was shared online or on social media without your consent? Even if you took the image yourself, you’re the only one that can decide who has the right to see it.
In addition to filing a police complaint, you can ask the court for an order. Proceeding this way could remove the intimate image quicker from the different platforms. The person who shared the image without your consent could face serious consequences.
What’s an intimate image?
An intimate image is defined in criminal and civil law. It can be an image, video, sound recording or live broadcast. It’s considered intimate when it:
- shows or seems to show a naked person or partly naked person exposing their genitals or other parts of their body (their breasts, buttocks or anal area) or
- shows explicit sexual activity.
An image is also considered intimate if the person shown, or who seems to be shown, could expect their privacy to be protected at the time the image was created, recorded or shared. This also includes sexual audio recordings or altered images that appear to represent you.
When you sue a person or a company in civil court to have your intimate image removed, you can receive a court order to have the image taken down. Next, you could ask to receive damages.
A quick way to stop non-consensual sharing through civil court
If someone shares an intimate image of you without your consent, you can ask a judge from the Court of Québec to have it removed. This process through the civil court is meant to be quick, easy and accessible.
The first step is to fill out a form online or in a courthouse. A checklist is available on the Quebec government website to help victims navigate the process.
Once this form is submitted, the court reviews it urgently. A judge can then order a person or company to:
- refrain from sharing the image,
- remove the image, if it’s already been shared,
- destroy the image.
Who can apply for this court order?
You can apply for this court order alone once you’re 14 years old. This means you don’t have to tell your parents about it. But if you’re under 14, a parent or legal guardian must apply on your behalf.
Your application can also be submitted by someone else than your parents or an organization. For example, this could be a trusted adult, like a teacher or a trusted organization like a victim support service.
You don’t need to inform the person who shared your intimate image that you applied for a court order or send them a copy of the application.
Who can the order target?
The court order can target a person, like your ex-partner or a social media profile. It can also target someone whose identity is unknown to the court, like a person using a fake name on social media. The order can also target a company or search engine that’s responsible for sharing the intimate image.
A single application can target several people or companies at once. For example, it could target the person who shared the intimate image on Instagram and also target Meta.
Once the court order is sent, they must stop sharing the intimate image or destroy it as quickly as possible, as decided by the judge.
What happens if an order isn’t respected?
If someone doesn’t follow a court order to remove or stop sharing an intimate image, there may be serious consequences.
If a person doesn’t respect the order, they can be fined $500 to $5,000 per day. They can also face a prison sentence of 18 months maximum. These penalties can be combined, and the amount of the fine can be doubled if the person repeats the offence.
Companies can be fined $5,000 to $50,000 for each day they’re not complying to the order. Company representatives can also face the same fines, in addition to a maximum prison sentence of 18 months.
How to obtain financial compensation
Besides asking for a court order to prevent or stop the sharing of an intimate image, you can also file a civil claim. This will allow you to get money as compensation for the harm you suffered.
To make a civil claim, you usually need to prove a person’s fault, that you suffered harm due to their actions, and that there’s a link between the person’s fault and the harm suffered.
However, when it comes to cases involving intimate images, the law now assumes that the person who shared the image is at fault. So it’s their responsibility to prove they did nothing wrong.
As the victim, you don’t have to prove the other person’s fault, which makes the claim easier.