On the 5th anniversary of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, Refuge – the UK’s largest specialist domestic abuse charity – warns that intimate image abuse charging rates are severely low and still declining, while reports of this crime continue to soar.
The Domestic Abuse Act was signed into law on 29th April 2021. During the Report stage, Refuge won its campaign – ‘The Naked Threat’ – which called on the government to make threats to share intimate images a crime.
Intimate image abuse, also known as so-called ‘revenge porn’, involves a perpetrator creating, sharing or threatening to share intimate photographs or videos of a survivor without their consent to cause harm and exert control. This includes AI-generated images and videos.
While sharing intimate images without consent has been a crime since 2015, Refuge’s successful campaign resulted in the ‘threat to share’ offence being written into the Domestic Abuse Act. The legislation came into force in July 2021.
However, five years on, alarming new data reveals charging rates for intimate image abuse and the ‘threat to share’ offence remain woefully low, despite rising reports.
Obtained by freedom of information (FOI) requests to 43 police forces in England and Wales – which yielded 27 responses, including 25 police forces providing a breakdown of outcomes – the data reveals an overall increase in recorded offences while charging rates have reduced over time.
Between the year ending June 2022 and the year ending June 2025, recorded intimate image abuse offences rose by 26.9% overall among the 25 police forces that provided outcome data.
In July 2021-July 2022, 4,058 offences were recorded, rising to 5,151 in July 2024-July 2025. However, despite an increase in recorded offences, the number of perpetrators charged per year remained flat. In real terms, this means charging rates remain consistently low and have declined over time. In this same time period, the proportion of cases resulting in a charge or summons fell from 5.8% in 2021-2022 to 4.5% in 2024-2025.
Between July 2021 and February 2026, 21,905 offences were recorded in total, but only 4.8% (1,047) of perpetrators were charged or summonsed. Of the 21,905 intimate image abuse offences recorded, nobody was charged in 56% (12,265) of cases despite the suspect having been identified. A key factor driving case attrition is victim withdrawal or inability to support the investigation further, which accounts for 55.8% (6,848) of cases where a suspect was identified.
While multiple factors may contribute to this, the high rate of withdrawal raises concerns about survivors’ experiences of reporting to the police and whether they are being adequately supported to remain engaged throughout investigations. Elsewhere, around 25% (5,417) of total offences did not progress due to evidential issues, even though the suspect has been identified and the victim supports the investigation.
Despite rising reports of threats to share intimate images, there is little information available on the progression of these cases, with only 11 police forces able to provide a breakdown of offences specifically recorded as threats to share intimate images. Across these forces, there were 10,960 recorded intimate image abuse offences in total between July 2021 and February 2026, of which a significant 21.4% (2,347) were classified as threats to share.
The data shows a substantial increase in recorded threats to share offences over time, rising by 344% between 2021-2022 and 2024-2025. In the eight months between July 2025 and February 2026, 647 such offences were already recorded – almost equivalent to the total recorded (650) across both 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 combined.
Since the introduction of the Domestic Abuse Act and the ‘threat to share’ offence, Refuge’s specialist Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment team has not supported any survivors whose perpetrator has been convicted of threatening to share an intimate image, despite survivors reporting to the police.
Across the board, cases of tech-facilitated abuse are rising rapidly. Referrals to the charity’s tech-facilitated and economic abuse service rose by more than 62% in 2025 compared to 2024, with the final three months of the year the highest on record for a single quarter.
In response to the FOI data, Refuge is urging for significant improvements in police practice, including consistent training for police officers and other criminal justice agencies.
The government’s recent Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy and police reform white paper indicate plans for improved training for officers, but is it crucial this training is mandatory, equipping all officers with the knowledge and skills needed to identify, investigate and gather evidence of tech-facilitated abuse, including intimate image abuse. Training must be trauma-informed and culturally competent, reinforcing that intimate image abuse is frequently perpetrated within a domestic abuse context and is often part of a broader pattern of behaviour, while ensuring officers are equipped to respond appropriately to survivors.
Refuge is also calling on the government to urgently implement impending legislative reforms to ensure that tech companies are held accountable, and to upgrade Ofcom’s VAWG guidance to a legally binding code.
Emma Pickering, Head of Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment at Refuge, said:
“Five years on from the Domestic Abuse Act, survivors of intimate image abuse are being failed far too often. These troubling police figures lay bare the stark disparity between the sheer number of reports compared to the shockingly low charge rates, and without a serious improvement in police response, survivors will continue to miss out on justice while perpetrators evade accountability.
“Mandatory police training is vital if women and girls are to feel confident that when they report intimate image abuse, they will be met with a response on par with the seriousness of the crime. Tech companies must also be held responsible for the harm allowed to persist on their platforms at the expense of women’s safety. Only then will women and girls feel empowered to use technology safely, as they deserve.”
