Faking It: Danish Women Unwittingly Turned Into Porn Models

Across the world, Danes enjoy a reputation of a cheerful and buoyant people, not averse to earthly delights and being remarkably open about their sex life. However, each medal has a reverse side, and more Danish women have recently become victims of a new sex-related internet craze.

Of late, more Danish women have been turned into porn models unknowingly, as obscene photo manipulations of women described as "friends" or "colleagues" appear on adult websites. To turn perfectly modest Danish ladies into dissolute porno models, all you need is their photos, tons of images of anonymous bodies entangled in pornographic positions and one unscrupulous editor, Danish Radio reported, citing a marked increase in "fake porn."

Fully dressed images are usually copied from a woman's profile on social networking sites only to be engineered to look like hardcore pornography. More often than not, the victims do not know who is behind the manipulation and are afraid that the smearing images will be spread further in an unhinged way, with users unable to distinguish a fake. In the manipulated images, only their face remains the same, but now it is sitting on a real porn model's body with bare breasts and exposed genitalia.

Twenty-two-year-old Maiken Lindhardt is one of the victims of the manipulation. Her perfectly decent images were doctored to look like hardcore porn.

"I know that it's not me, right? But others who have seen the pictures might well believe that it was me," a dismayed Maiken Lindhardt told Danish Radio.

Danish Radio's review showed that perpetrators are not content with posting fake pictures, but also encourage other users to contact the victims with obscene propositions, which may lead to unbridled harassment. According to Danish Radio, being involuntarily turned into a porn model and labeled as a prostitute can have severe psychological consequences, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

The biggest problem is that it is impossible for the victims to fully put the incident behind them, since the fake images are never deleted and remain circulating on the internet. Additionally, it may impede one's career if a potential employer decides to run an online search.

To stop the torrent of profanities spewed against Danish women, Danish Radio launched a hotline, where similar cases of fake porn can be reported under the condition of anonymity.

In Denmark, 17 percent of men and 13 percent of women aged 15-25 have had nude photos of themselves shared or published online, according to government figures. This dismal figure was addressed by Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who wrote on Facebook that the victims' souls are left "scarred for life."

Last week, Denmark presented a series of measures to curb so-called "revenge porn," which includes the sharing of explicit images of people online without their consent. Among other things, the penalty was raised from six months to two years in prison. Additionally, traffickers earning money by selling or exchanging naked images will also face harsher penalties.

In 2015, a high-profile trial involving fake pornography ended with the accused man being sentenced to six months' imprisonment and a fine for manipulating images of eleven girls, several of which were minors.

 

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