The Crown Prosecution Service has issued guidance to ensure prosecutors are up to date with ‘revenge porn’ legislation as the first person believed to be convicted of the new offence awaits sentence. 

Jason Asagba, 21, pleaded guilty at Reading Magistrates’ Court on 16 May to posting, texting and emailing intimate photographs of a woman with intent to cause her distress, an offence under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015. Sentencing was today adjourned until 4 September.

Prosecutors have been sent details of case studies to help understand the legislation better.

The 2015 act created a new criminal offence of revenge pornography. It is a criminal offence to disclose private sexual photographs and films without the consent of an individual who appears in them and with the intent to cause the individual distress.

Previously, such cases were prosecuted under the Communications Act 2003, Malicious Communications Act 1988 or the Harassment Act 1997.

Director of public prosecutions Alison Saunders said it was too early to say what impact the new legislation was having on the number of prosecutions. ‘However, anecdotally, we are seeing more of these cases being brought to us by the police and it is clear the new legislation is having an impact,’ she said.

Saunders said she was ensuring, within the CPS, that ‘all relevant staff have the most up-to-date guidance, and the benefit of learning from their colleagues, so we have circulated details of case studies we now have to help improve our expertise in using the new legislation’.

Attorney general Jeremy Wright welcomed the CPS’s guidance.

‘We live in a world where images are able to be shared instantaneously and the criminal justice system needs to keep pace with that reality,’ he said.