Ontario Court Justice Brian Puddington said the case exposed a gap in the Criminal Code. A Canadian man who was accused of sharing a fake nude image of his wife on social media has been acquitted after an Ontario judge ruled that the act, while “morally reprehensible,” is not currently a crime under Canadian law.
Ontario Court Justice Brian Puddington said the case exposed a gap in the Criminal Code, which does not explicitly cover the distribution of digitally altered intimate images. “Creating and distributing these fake images is not morally reprehensible and, frankly, obscene,” Puddington wrote. “It may be that Parliament will turn its mind to criminalising this conduct in the future.”
The man had been charged with publishing and transmitting intimate images without consent after allegedly sending manipulated photos of his wife to another man on Snapchat. In one image, the woman appeared to be in a bra in her bathroom; in another, her face was digitally placed onto a naked body that was not hers, according to The Toronto Star.
However, the judge found that the images did not meet the legal threshold for “intimate images.” The first photo, he said, did not show enough nudity to qualify, while the doctored one did not depict the victim’s actual body.
In the fake photo, “it is not her nude body and, it is not her breasts — both of which are necessary to meet that definition,” Puddington wrote.
“If this type of photo were meant to be captured by this section, Parliament would have specifically done so … This is not to say that a fake image does not cause harm and embarrassment, but that harm is not captured by the current provisions.”
“While I am sympathetic to her, that sympathy cannot play any role in my judgment,” Puddington wrote, adding that he was bound by the law as written, not by moral outrage.
