LONDON — England and Wales will begin enforcing new laws criminalizing depictions of “non-fatal strangulation,” as well as sexual content in which adults portray underage characters, starting Nov. 6, the U.K. Ministry of Justice announced Friday.
In its announcement, the Ministry of Justice advised: “If you possess or are continuing to publish an image covered by these offences, you must stop doing so before they come into force. This means if you possess it, you need to permanently delete it or otherwise get rid of it before commencement. If you are continuing to publish it (whether online or offline), you need to remove it and stop publication before commencement.”
Under the new laws, possessing or publishing “pornographic images of strangulation or suffocation” is a priority offense under the Online Safety Act. Possession of such material could lead to up to two years in prison, while publication could result in sentences up to five years.
Publication or possession of sexual content in which adults portray characters under 16 is now also banned. The new law specifies “sound or information associated with the image” as the relevant criteria indicating whether a performer is portraying a character under 16.
The law notes, “A person is not to be taken as pretending to be under 16 if it is fanciful that they are actually under 16 in the way pretended.” In addition, a government memorandum notes that the law is “not intended to criminalize a pornographic image of someone who is clearly an adult where the only marker of childhood is the fact that he or she is in school uniform.”
The new law also includes language outlawing depictions of incest involving blood relatives, but this ban only applies to “step” content if a performer is portraying someone under the age of 18. The government has stated that this provision is meant to ensure that the law only criminalizes material that portrays sex that would be illegal in real life.
Although the new laws, enacted as part of the revised Crime and Policing Bill, also apply to Northern Ireland and Scotland, a date has not yet been set for enforcement to begin in those regions.
