In recent weeks, the case of the UCD medicine student who had images of her shared in class group chats and circulated with staff following a sexual assault has not just horrified members of the UCD community but has also dominated national headlines. Outside of the obvious issue of UCD’s handling of the situation, the case brings to light a broader discussion of how we address image-based sexual abuse in Ireland and whether the law does enough to protect victims of sexual abuse.
This latest incident comes in the wake of recent controversies surrounding the AI chatbot Grok, featured on Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter). Users of the site used the bot’s image generation tool to create non-consensual sexual images of real women and children. By uploading or referencing publicly available photographs, users were able to generate and share hyper-realistic sexualised depictions of those individuals. The incidents sparked international outrage, with many individuals choosing to leave the site.
Law does currently exist that addresses image-based sexual violence. The Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, more commonly known as Coco’s law, came into effect in 2021. The act followed lobbying from Jackie Fox, mother of Nicole ‘Coco’ Fox, who died by suicide at age 21, following years of abuse and harassment online.
The Act created two offences criminalising the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. The first, under section 2, makes it an offence to distribute, publish, or threaten to distribute or publish an intimate image without consent, with intent to cause harm or being reckless as to whether harm is caused. It carries a maximum penalty of an unlimited fine and/or seven years imprisonment.
The second, under section 3, makes it an offence to record, distribute or publish an intimate image without consent, carrying a maximum fine of €5,000 and/or 12 months imprisonment.
Taken at face value, Coco’s Law provides a clear mechanism through which victims of image-based sexual abuse can seek criminal accountability for their perpetrators. Even in cases where intent to cause harm may be difficult to prove, the Section 3 offence captures the act of recording or distributing an intimate image without consent, thereby lowering the evidentiary threshold and broadening the scope of prosecution. The provisions clearly address instances that many women fear, such as revenge porn or having their nudes leaked. The sharing of the image of the UCD medicine student quite clearly falls under the Section 2 provisions.
The difficulty, however, becomes more pronounced when we return to the Grok controversy and consider the role of artificial intelligence. The controversy revealed how easily digital spaces can facilitate mass image-based abuse. This represents an expansion of image-based abuse beyond the traditional paradigm contemplated by Coco’s Law. The Act was drafted primarily with the non-consensual sharing of real intimate images in mind. AI-generated content complicates this framework. Where no “real” intimate image ever existed, questions arise about whether the act depicts synthetic or manipulated imagery. Furthermore, the argument exists that many of these users did not distribute or publish these images. They entered a prompt, and it was Grok that published the image to the platform.
That is not to say that there is no redress under existing law. In January, the European Commission, in collaboration with Coimisiún na Meán, launched a formal investigation into X under the Digital Services Act (DSA). In February, the Data Protection Commission opened an inquiry into X under section 110 of the Data Protection Act 2018.
But public outrage has prompted calls for reform. This is not an area of law that should leave ambiguity. A Private Member’s Bill, the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences (Amendment) Bill 2026, aims to address this existing ambiguity and close the loopholes in Irish law. If passed, it will make it a criminal offence to generate sexual abuse imagery using AI and would explicitly hold publishers legally responsible. In theory, it would ensure this type of image-based sexual assault (IBSA) is criminalised.
But the question of whether the justice system fails victims of IBSA goes beyond what is written in the Irish Statute Book. A legal system may be coherent on paper and yet fall short as a justice system in practice. More generally, for many sexual abuse victims, image-based or not, confidence in the criminal justice system can be fragile.
Between 2018 and 2022, just over a fifth of reported sexual offences in Ireland led to a charge or summons. Reporting sexual offences involves a system that is adversarial, slow and emotionally taxing for many. The decision to report requires victims to weigh not only the likelihood of conviction but also the personal cost of participating in a system that is not designed for them but is centred around the accused.
Our criminal justice system is based around immovable principles that are fundamental to our concept of justice and fairness: the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, and the burden of proof of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ These protections are the fundamental bedrock of a liberal democratic legal order. They are enshrined in Article 38.1 of the constitution: “No person shall be tried on any criminal charge save in due course of law.” The legitimacy of the law requires fairness, and this cannot be set aside in pursuit of expediency, or even the understandable desire to provide immediate vindication to victims. There is a prioritisation of protecting the innocent from wrongful conviction, even at the cost of some guilty individuals avoiding punishment. It’s encapsulated in Blackstone’s ratio, which states that “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
Thus, the court process is about determining the accused’s guilt and does not hold itself to obligations to the victim. The victim’s role, while central in evidential terms, is procedurally peripheral. One example is the controversial use of sexual assault victims’ therapy notes in court, something condemned by victims and therapists alike. Yet, in the opinion of the attorney general, a complete ban on the use would be repugnant to Article 38.1. But for victims, the prospect that deeply personal reflections made in the course of recovery could be examined in open court can be profoundly distressing.
In many other criminal prosecutions, such as theft, fraud, or even murder, the central evidence may be physical objects, financial records, CCTV footage, or independent witnesses. In sexual offence cases, by contrast, proceedings frequently hinge on the credibility of the complainant and the accused. The complainant’s conduct before, during, and after the assault may be scrutinised in detail. When you consider the chances of conviction and the often short sentences imposed, for many, the process is simply not worth it. We’ve developed a culture, not just in the legal system, but in society, where victims are afraid to come forward. For example, the aforementioned UCD medicine student did not initially inform UCD of her rape because she was concerned she would not be believed.
So how do we reconcile the competing interests of a victim and the accused? The law does attempt to mitigate this. In rape cases, Ireland has enacted provisions restricting the admission of evidence about a complainant’s previous sexual history, and some restrictions have been put in place regarding the use of therapy notes. Yet these protections are not absolute. They cannot be absolute under our constitution. Any categorical exclusion of potentially relevant evidence risks infringing the accused’s constitutional right to a fair trial. In truth, there is no neat reconciliation available. A criminal trial, as we currently conceive it, is not a forum for vindicating a victim’s experience.
But acknowledging that reality does not mean accepting the status quo as sufficient. If the core principles of due process cannot be displaced, then reform must focus on what surrounds the trial rather than the trial itself. This includes clearer statutory drafting to remove ambiguity in emerging areas such as AI-generated abuse; stronger and more consistently applied sentencing guidelines so that perpetrators face consequences when convicted; and a Garda Síochána that victims feel comfortable going to.
A justice system should be measured not just by its conviction rates but by how it treats those who engage with the process, on both sides of the aisle. Ensuring that complainants are informed, supported, and treated with dignity throughout proceedings does not weaken due process but strengthens public confidence in it. Until that happens, the question of whether the justice system fails victims of sexual abuse will continue to be answered with a yes.