Naked Threat: Refuge's campaign that made threatening to share intimate images a crime

In the UK, sharing an intimate image without consent was a crime, but threatening to do so was not. Abusers exploited the gap: victims described staying silent, obeying, or returning to partners because an ex held their images over them, and police had no offence to charge. Refuge, the domestic-abuse charity, had surveyed the ground — its research found one in seven young women had received threats to share, overwhelmingly from a current or former partner.

With AMV BBDO, Refuge launched 'The Naked Threat' at the end of 2020: a national online and print campaign, a Cosmopolitan Instagram hack, and a central reframe — the threat that ruins lives is not only the abuser, it is the law that leaves the threat legal. The creative literalised this by portraying the law itself as an abuser looming over women. The campaign demanded a single, specific fix: make threatening to share an intimate image a criminal offence.

In February 2021 the charity followed up with a rapidly produced social film starring Olivia Colman, supporter Zara McDermott, Nicky Morgan MP and survivor Natasha Saunders, addressed directly to Home Secretary Priti Patel, urging viewers to tag her on Twitter. Some 42,000 people wrote to their MPs demanding the change.

On 1 March 2021 the government committed to amending the Domestic Abuse Bill — which was already passing through Parliament — to criminalise threats to share intimate images, and the Act received Royal Assent that April. The UK government's own later announcement credits the change to the campaign's success, and in 2023 it went further, overhauling intimate-image offences and criminalising deepfakes under the Online Safety Bill.

Name the loophole itself as the abuser, then lobby for the fix

The legal gap was real and specific: creating and sharing were offences, but the threat of sharing — the coercion tool used daily by abusers — was not, so police could act on neither.

Naming the loophole 'The Naked Threat' made an invisible drafting gap memorable and repeatable, which is what a mass letter-writing campaign of 42,000 people requires.

The Domestic Abuse Bill was already in Parliament, giving the demand a live legislative vehicle; pressure converted into a government amendment within days rather than years.

A celebrity-fronted tactical film addressed at a named decision-maker (the Home Secretary) kept the ask narrow: one clause, one signature away.

Refuge led with its own research — one in seven young women threatened — so the campaign argued from evidence the charity itself had produced.

When the blocker is a law, a campaign still works if it names the problem plainly enough for people to repeat to their MP — and times the reveal to a live bill that can absorb it.

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 created the offence of threatening to disclose private sexual images with intent to cause distress. In June 2023 the government announced a wider overhaul: new base offences for sharing intimate images without consent, carrying up to two years plus sex-offender registration, and first-time criminalisation of deepfake intimate images — an arc that began with Refuge's Naked Threat campaign. Refuge still publishes data showing charge rates remain low, keeping the issue on the agenda.