Swatting a rape Survivor should be treated as a serious criminal offense, with enhanced penalties when the act is intended to intimidate, threaten, or
Swatting a rape Survivor should be treated as a serious criminal offense, with enhanced penalties when the act is intended to intimidate, threaten, or retaliate against her for reporting sexual violence.
Swatting involves knowingly making a false emergency report to send police to someone’s location. It can place the targeted person, responding officers, and innocent bystanders in danger.
The argument is not that swatting is currently legal. It is that deliberately targeting a rape Survivor should carry additional criminal consequences when the act is connected to her disclosure, police report, or participation in a criminal case.
A rape Survivor should not have to fear that someone will send armed police officers to her home because she reported sexual violence, spoke publicly, or refused to remain silent.
Imagine already carrying the fear and uncertainty that can follow sexual violence. You may have worked for months or years to feel safe in your own home again. Then someone deliberately creates another terrifying situation, knowing what you have already endured.
Swatting is not a prank. It involves knowingly making a false emergency report to provoke a police response, sometimes involving armed officers. It can endanger the Survivor, responding officers, and innocent bystanders.
There is an important legal distinction. Making a knowingly false emergency report may itself be a crime. But using that false report specifically to punish, frighten, or silence a rape Survivor raises an additional question of criminal retaliation or intimidation.
Depending on the jurisdiction and circumstances, existing witness intimidation, stalking, or retaliation laws may apply.
My argument is that proven retaliation through swatting should be an explicit reason for enhanced criminal penalties, even when the Survivor escapes physical injury.
The emotional harm should not be dismissed. A woman may become afraid to answer her door, frightened by unexpected noises, or anxious that another false report will bring police back to her home. The place where she worked so hard to feel safe may no longer feel safe.
We cannot keep encouraging women to report sexual violence while failing to take seriously those who deliberately terrorize them for doing so.
A Survivor should not have to be injured or killed before the law recognizes the seriousness of an intentional attack on her safety, peace, and freedom.
But the law should also account for the deliberate use of police intervention to terrorize -weaponize- a Survivor, even when no physical injury occurs.
A woman should not have to be injured or killed before the criminal justice system recognizes the seriousness of an intentional threat to her safety.