What would you do if someone threatened to share your private photos unless you paid them or did what they demanded? In Sri Lanka, while most people know that selling, sharing and publishing intimate photos without consent is illegal, much fewer recognize that even threatening someone to share their private photos or videos is also an offence under the law. This public unawareness on such a broad scale puts many victims in isolation, suffering not just the emotional harm but also the injustice of inaction. The victims too often are blamed, disregarded, or too scared to report, and the perpetrators take advantage of this ignorance to keep on abusing. Sextortion is not a private issue, and the victims entitle justice, protection, and acknowledgment under the law.
What is Sextortion
Sextortion represents one of the most insidious manifestations of sexual exploitation, combining the elements of coercion, threats, and abuse of authority in order to elicit sexual favors or sexually explicit content. It has emerged globally as a complex problem where sexual violence, corruption, and cybercrime converge. Sextortion has also assumed significance in Sri Lanka in material as well as nonmaterial contexts. Scope and Extent in the Sri Lankan Context
Sextortion in Sri Lanka: How Widespread is the Problem
The phenomenon of sextortion in Sri Lanka extend across institutional, interpersonal, and virtual spaces. Offline, women continue to report instances wherein the influential coerce sexual favors on the basis of employment, promotions, or access to government services. Such situations often remain concealed since they are stigmatized, due to fear of reprisals, and lack formal legal acknowledgment of sextortion. Online, the problem has compounded in massive proportions over the past few years with increased internet access and social media on the internet. School children, young women, and students have been targeted by offenders who use sexual photographs or films to blackmail victims into performing more sex acts or regular submission. Accounts from the National Child Protection Authority and the Police Cyber Crimes Division are that such cases are increasing, although there is common underreporting due to fear of reputation.
Cases in the Sri Lankan media highlight trends of a kind where consensual photographs within intimate relationships are turned into weapons after a break-up, or where strangers are tricked into receiving pictures or hacked into and asked for sexual favors in return for non-publication. In several reported cases, youngsters have been groomed on the internet and compelled to produce sexually explicit content, which is used to fuel regular abuse. These patterns illustrate that sextortion isn’t only limited to grown-ups in a workplace setting but is also a relevant child protection issue.
Does the Sri Lankan Law Recognize Sextortion?
Although the Sri Lankan Penal Code does not explicitly define sextortion itself as an offence, the sexual harassment, extortion, criminal intimidation, and obscene publications sections provide possible avenues for prosecution.
Sexual harassment is defined in Section 345 of the Penal Code as conduct where “by use of criminal force or assault or by use of words or actions, sexually harasses another person or causes sexual annoyance or harassment.” Sextortion, directly or indirectly through forced communication, clearly amounts to sexual harassment by instilling fear and mental intrusion. For example, threatening to publish intimate pictures unless sexual favors are offered is comfortably within the broad ambit of “words or behavior” amounting to harassment. But the weakness of this provision is its focus on annoyance or harassment, without even lightly brushing against the extortionate demand for sexual gratification as the quid pro quo.
Section 372, criminalizing extortion, provides that “whoever intentionally instils any fear of any hurt to that person or to any other person, and by means of such fear or with the intention thereby to commit extortion, counsels or procures or willfully permits any other person to commit any act whereby the bodily or mental peace or security of such person is destroyed or disturbed, commits extortion.” In cases of sextortion, the injury threatened is often reputational harm through disclosure of intimate content. The contentious issue, however, is whether sexual services are “property or valuable security.” Narrow construction could reserve the position of including sexual services in this category, but purposive construction could classify them as “things of value” acquired by fraud. Comparative courts, particularly Indian courts under the corresponding section 383 of the Indian Penal Code, have at times construed extortion to include valuables other than material ones. In Sri Lankan terminology, the interpretation would have to be such as to obtain to ensure that sextortion is not downplayed as a kind of harassment but as extortionate exploitation.
Section 483 of the Penal Code concerning criminal intimidation is even more squarely applicable. It prescribes that “whoever threatens any person with any harm to his person, reputation, or property, or to the person or reputation of any other person in whom such person is interested, with intent to alarm such person or to make him do something which he is not bound by law to do, … commits criminal intimidation.” Sextortion falls squarely in this category, as threatening publication of sexually explicit material itself constitutes an injury to reputation. Moreover, where the victim is compelled to perform sexual acts or provide additional material, the act is patently something they are not required to perform by law. Section 483 thus provides a firm foundation to prosecute the coercive nature of sextortion, though the punishment under this section is still quite light.
With regard to cases involving minors, Section 286A on obscene publications plays the main role. The section criminalizes a person who “hires, employs, persuades, uses, induces, coerces, or facilitates a child to participate in any indecent or obscene publication or exhibition.” If children are coerced by threats online into producing explicit materials, it can be applied even without proof of actual publication, because the act of coercion is deemed criminal. This makes Section 286A an effective one to invoke to prosecute child sextortion. But its weakness is that it only shields children, extending no similar protection to adults against involuntary appearance in obscene materials.
In addition to the Penal Code, the Computer Crimes Act No. 24 of 2007 introduces complementary tools by criminalizing unauthorized computer system access, data theft, and personation cheating. Such measures are usually triggered where perpetrators hack into devices or personate individuals in order to take control of intimate photos. The Act, however, does not clearly criminalize threatened exposure of personal pictures, and hence a loophole is created for sextortion victims in the online space.
The Incomplete Shield: Legal Shortcomings in Combating Sextortion
Reliance on an ad hoc collection of provisions that are not related to one another undercuts the piecemeal nature of Sri Lanka’s law. The absence of a freestanding offence of sextortion necessitates the prosecutor to stitch together allegations under sexual harassment, extortion, and intimidation, which may raise evidentiary challenges as well as inconsistent sentencing. Furthermore, the law does not expressly declare that consent provided out of fear of reputation harm is not considered valid, and this allows abusers to assert that victims consented willingly. Adult victims, unlike children, are not protected from coerced participation in obscene material, and the lack of an offence for non-consensual image abuse diminishes redress. Even where measures are taken, the enforcement is weak due to social stigma, refusal to provide confidential complaint mechanisms, and failure in the training of investigators and prosecutors.
Comparative Perspectives: What Can Sri Lanka Learn from Abroad
Other jurisdictions have recognized such loopholes and developed more precise models. The Philippines, through the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, criminalizes sextortion and sexual coercion over the Internet and imposes particular sanctions for sextortion-type acts. India’s Information Technology Act of 2000, in particular Sections 67 and 67A, criminalizes the publication or transmission of obscene material in electronic form and has been applied in cases involving sextortion. The USA has specifically criminalized sextortion in some of its states, regarding non-consensual image threats as sexual crimes and not merely property offences. Kenya and Tanzania have also amended their sexual offences legislations to overtly criminalize abuse of position of authority for pressuring sexual favors. These frameworks provide the way legislative clarity helps in victim safeguard and discourages perpetrators and offer lessons for Sri Lanka.
Closing Legal Loopholes: Policy and Legislative Reforms Needed
Reforms in Sri Lanka should begin by introducing sextortion as a distinct offence in the Penal Code, which is defined to cover demands for sexual favors as well as threats to release intimate material. The definition of consent should be changed to stipulate that consent obtained by coercion of exposure or abuse of authority will be void. Making revenge porn laws, which criminalize non-consensual distribution and threats of distribution of intimate images, a priority legislation is important. Institutional arrangements, like confidential reporting mechanisms and cybercrime cells to handle it more effectively, have to be strengthened to implement it better. Public awareness campaigns would also be necessary for de-stigmatizing reporting and empowering the victims, and training law enforcers and judiciary will allow cases to be sensitive and effective.
Justice, cannot be selective, and the pain of victims of those being threatened and coerced must not be permitted to remain unheard. In Sri Lanka, even though sextortion is not legally defined, the general provisions in law can be utilized to encompass it, and it is incumbent and the duty of the concerned institutions to make them operational. However victims are not only entitled to redress through law, but to a world that does not shame, blame, or turn its back on them. Every exploitation is an act of collective failure, and it is the responsibility of all; family, community, institutions, and peers to resist it. Empowerment is creating spaces where victims reclaim control over their lives, where courage is met with solidarity, and where exploitation is met with accountability. Sextortion is not only an individual wrong; it is a societal injury, and society must progress to mend it.
Written By: –
Saumi Sandupama Vidupathi
Faculty of Law,
University of Colombo
Design By: –
Rtr. Kawindra Wickramasinghe
(Junior Blog Team Member 2025-26)
