Digital Violence Against Women: Is There a Real Need for Special Criminalization?

Abstract Social networking and rapid digital evolution have created a brand-new framework of human behaviours and habits. Of course, the majority of them already existed over the centuries but in a different form; as a result, conventional assaults towards legal interests of specific individuals have initially transformed into electronic and then into cyber(-)crimes (p.e. from conventional pornography to internet pornography or cyber/digital pornography including sometimes even virtual pornography via pseudo images and totally AI generated pictures). When discussion comes to gender-based violence, in particular violence against women and domestic violence, we realize that abuses and violations of their fundamental human rights could take place either online or offline; furthermore, both similarities and differences in old and new behaviours, and consequently in crime formations (“actus reus”) and in perpetrators’ “modus operandi” could easily be found and categorized. This paper will not discover the causes or the elements behind the various digital abuses against women; its first purpose is to gather the various crime behaviours against women and reach some conclusions by a methodically comparative bibliographic and legislative research. Besides, tackling gender-based violence –in particular violence against women and domestic violence- consists one of the main contemporary concerns of every liberal state. CoE’s contribution to it –through Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) but even via ECHR’s case law- is indisputable. At the same time, European Union is trying to end gender-based violence through its member states with a new legal instrument (a proposed Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence), whose results are expected to be more direct and -hopefully- more effective. The main target of this paper is to present and examine the specific form of digital crime against women and girls as long as the majority of crimes nowadays takes place digitally; notwithstanding the fact that pandemic and post pandemic era have definitely determined criminals’ modus operandi. At the end of the day, someone has to answer: how Criminal Law faces the new aforementioned behaviours, based on the fundamental theory of legal interest and leading to a justified (extra) standardization? And even more: where does this “plus” in penalties (: aggravation) for behaviours that combine characteristics of digital and gender-based criminality come from?