Upskirting made criminal offence in England and Wales

Upskirting is now a criminal offence in England and Wales after a high-profile campaign led by a woman who was targeted at a rock festival.

People can now be jailed for up to two years for taking a photograph or video under somebody's clothing in order to see their genitals or underwear.

The BBC says the law will cover incidents where the purpose is to obtain sexual gratification, or to cause humiliation, distress or alarm.

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The woman who led the campaign, Gina Martin, said she hoped the legislation would help people “feel comfortable” to report such incidents.

Martin was at the British Summer Time music festival in Hyde Park, London, in 2017 when a man put his phone between her legs and took pictures.

She reported the incident to the police and was stunned when she was told that upskirting was not a specific offence and the case had therefore been closed.

“With a clear head and time to think about it, I couldn't believe what I was hearing,” she recalled. “This wasn't good enough.”

When she wrote about her experiences on social media her post went viral, with other women sharing their own experiences.

“Other women shared similar experiences with me and that's when I realised this was a bigger problem,” she remembers. An online petition calling for police to reopen the case quickly received 50,000 signatures.

The Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse brought a private members' bill to criminalise upskirting, backing the creation of an upskirting offence.

Although the bill was expected to pass through the Commons easily, it was blocked by Conservative MP Christopher Chope. He later said he objected because he does not support the procedural principle of legislation being passed without debate at second reading.

Announcing the new law, Justice Minister Lucy Frazer added: “We have always been clear - there are no excuses for this behaviour and offenders should feel the full force of the law. From today, they will.”

She added that by working “Martin and other campaigners”, more people will be “protected from this degrading and humiliating practice”.

Upskirting is already a specific crime in Scotland but not in Northern Ireland, where the teaching union is calling for it to be made a criminal offence too.

A teenager who took such photos of two teachers at a County Fermanagh school was found guilty of committing acts of outraging public decency.