Charge rates of just 4.5% for image-based abuse cases across England and Wales sit at the centre of a new police super-complaint, filed by lawyers from Leigh Day working with the charities the Centre for Women’s Justice and #NotYourPorn. The figure, drawn from data covering 39 forces, points to a widening gap between the growth of the problem and the institutional resources devoted to policing it. In some forces, the charge rate fell below 1%.
The economics of the mismatch are stark. Home Office data shows only 569 charges were issued for image-based abuse in 2025/2026, while the Revenge Porn Helpline, the charity that helps victims get non-consensual images removed from the internet, received almost 25,000 reports in 2025. Referrals to the helpline rose by more than 4,000% between 2015 and 2025. “Despite the increased public awareness, and the creation of new criminal offences designed to address this conduct, there has been no corresponding increase in charging rates, prosecutions or convictions,” the complaint states. “The unavoidable conclusion is that the overwhelming majority of this offending goes unaddressed.”
The complaint draws on evidence from 100 people who reported intimate images being shared online without their consent. It describes the policing response as “fragmented, inconsistent and incapable of meeting the scale of the threat posed by image-based abuse”, defined as “the taking, sharing or creating of intimate content without the survivor’s consent, or threatening to do so”. The research, first reported in coverage including the Guardian’s investigation at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/oct/07/police-routinely-failing-to-investigate-revenge-porn-reports-research-shows, found the abuse is still frequently dismissed or not recognised as criminal offending, despite being described by the former prime minister Keir Starmer as a national emergency. Women and girls make up 98.9% of reported images.
There is also a hidden cost being borne by survivors themselves. The report notes that in many cases police outsourced evidence-gathering to victims, leaving them to work out how to collate proof that images were being disseminated widely and how to get content removed from the internet. One woman reported that an officer “almost giggled on the phone to me”. Another said the officer responded: “Boys will be boys.” A third was told: “I bet you’ve learned your lesson.”
Meanwhile, the vast majority of survivors did not report the abuse to police at all, with “embarrassment, shame and fear” contributing to their reluctance. “It felt like to them it wasn’t a priority, it wasn’t even a crime,” one woman told researchers. Another said: “Police involvement has not alleviated the harm caused by this offence. Instead, it has intensified my distress and left me feeling powerless and completely unsupported as a victim.”
The super-complaint mechanism, introduced in 2018, allows concerns to be raised about ways of policing that may significantly harm the interests of the public generally, rather than focusing on an individual force or officer. The complaint will be jointly considered by the College of Policing and the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which will decide whether to open a wider investigation.
Harriet Bland, a lawyer with the Centre for Women’s Justice, warned that institutional reform is needed. “Without an urgent overhaul of police guidance and training on image-based abuse, which must be regularly updated, and a clear national strategy rolled out across forces, survivors will continue to be let down,” she said. The complaint also flags a growing pressure on the system: rapid innovations in AI are helping abusers find new ways to create and disseminate synthetic explicit material, sometimes known as deepfake content, adding further strain to a response the research concludes is already unable to meet the scale of the threat.