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Police investigate suicide of woman after ‘revenge porn’ sex tape

Police are probing the suicide of a 32-year-old mother of two in Spain after hundreds of colleagues saw an intimate video involving her.

Police investigate suicide of woman after 'revenge porn' sex tape
Photo: diegocervo/Depositphotos

The woman committed suicide at her home on Saturday, a police spokesman told AFP on Wednesday, adding officers in Alcala de Henares near Madrid were probing “whether a privacy offence was committed.”

According to Spanish media, an intimate video in which the 32-year-old appeared, filmed five years prior, had somehow been shared on WhatsApp and seen by many of the 2,500 employees at a factory near Madrid where she worked.   

The factory belongs to Italian industrial vehicle maker Iveco.   

Investigators will try and determine whether those who shared the video can be held responsible for her death, the police spokesman said.   

It is unclear who shared the footage, but so-called “revenge porn,” when ex-partners share intimate photos or videos without permission, has become a global problem.

Ivan Cancho, one of her colleagues, told Spanish television that people started looking at her, there were “people who went to see her at her work station to see who the colleague was (in the video), she suffered big 
pressure.”   

According to Spanish media, the woman was married and had two young children.

Iveco was not available for comment on Wednesday.   

In a statement, the factory's works council expressed “pain and dismay” on behalf of the employees and denounced “the irresponsible use of social networks which has tragic consequences.”

The CCOO union, which the woman belonged to, said the incident could constitute sexual harassment and announced it would make a complaint to the health and safety executive to denounce “the company's inaction.”   

“The company, which knew from May 23 that the woman was being harassed by a colleague, did nothing to avoid it,” it said in a statement.   

According to Spain's criminal code, sharing audiovisual recordings involving a person without his or her consent can carry three months to a year in jail “when this disclosure seriously undermines that person's personal privacy.”

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WOMEN

Man arrested on Madrid metro for ‘upskirting’ over 500 women

Spanish police said Wednesday they have arrested a man suspected of secretly recording videos of the underwear of over 500 women, some of them minors, on public transit and supermarkets.

Man arrested on Madrid metro for 'upskirting' over 500 women
Photos: AFP

The man allegedly used a mobile phone concealed inside a backpack which he placed on the ground to take pictures up women's skirts in Madrid without their consent, a practice known as “upskirting”, police said in a statement.   

He then uploaded at least 283 of these videos to a pornographic site where they were viewed over a million times.

Police arrested the 53-year-old Colombian national while he was in the act of recording up the dress of a woman on the Madrid metro using a “strategically placed mobile phone” in his backpack, the statement said.   

He “acted in a compulsive way, daily, recording all the women that he could,” it added.

During one five-day period he recorded 29 different women, police said.   

The man operated in the metro and commuter trains and “in some cases followed some of the women from the metro to supermarkets to continue recording them,” Rafael Fernandez of the cybercrime unit of Spain's national 
police told reporters.   

Officers seized a laptop and three hard drives from his home which had videos with images of hundreds of women whom he secretly recorded.   

A total of 555 women, some of them underage, appear on the 283 videos which he posted online, Fernandez said.

Police have so far managed to identify 29 of the women, who have filed criminal complaints against the man, he added.   

The man has been charged with violating privacy, corruption as well as child abuse and child prostitution since some of his victims were underage, Fernandez said. He has been remanded in custody pending his trial.

Britain specifically outlawed “upskirting” earlier this year following an 18-month campaign by a victim who was secretly photographed at a music festival.

In South Korea women have held regular mass protests against such secretly filmed pornography known as “molka” as anger over the issue grows in the country.

READ ALSO: Madrid just banned 'manspreading' on all public transport 

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