A woman feared for her safety as a man hiding behind a fake Facebook account bombarded her with pictures of his genitals. After months of cyber-flashing the culprit was revealed to be someone she had not seen since they had been at school together more than a decade earlier.
Luke Nasser, a 31-year-old from Newport, admitted using an account named Jon Jones II to send grossly offensive images to the victim for more than two months. Newport Magistrates’ Court heard a statement from the victim who said: “It became a regular thing. Sometimes multiple times a week and multiple times a day. The picture would be sent and unsent.”
The victim would get a notification saying she had received a ‘message request’ because she was not ‘friends’ with the Facebook account, which appeared to have been used for selling clothes. When she checked the request she would see a picture of a man’s genitals flash up before quickly being deleted by the sender. But eventually Nasser changed his approach and left one of the images up. He then wrote to the victim: “Have you had any messages?”
Although she did not know who was cyber-flashing her, there was a clue to his identity. The victim and the fake account shared several ‘mutual friends’ who had attended her former school, Duffryn High, which is now known as John Frost School. After the victim reported the offence, Facebook provided Gwent Police with an IP address linked to the account — revealing it to be that of Nasser.
The victim had rarely spoken to Nasser at school and had not spent time with him since. In her statement she said: “Once I found out who it was, I wasn’t shocked because Luke had always been what I would describe as ‘weird’. I didn’t expect this behaviour from him but I was not shocked. This then made me worried about bumping into him when I am in Newport. If his sexual desire to harass me was that strong, what else would he do?”
Her statement also gave an insight into the fear she experienced during the period when she did not know who was behind the messages. “In the moment, receiving the picture, it felt really alarming to have this repeated behaviour and not know who it was or why. Cyber-flashing goes so much further than the offence itself. It makes you worry about your safety outside the home [knowing there was] a man with a weird and prolonged interest in harassing you, while you don’t know who that man is, so every man is a worry. I am a strong and confident woman and yet I was still affected by this behaviour in my daily life.
“Was it someone I was walking past daily? I began to worry that if the person was so focused on exposing himself to me then I may well be in danger if I was ever alone with him. I worried that if I was walking in a back alley, then perhaps I wasn’t safe from escalation. It’s simply alarming behaviour. The clear angle for this harassment was for sexual gratification and I had to endure this.
“This went on for so long I wanted to delete my social media that I use to keep in contact with my friends, which shouldn’t be something I have to consider. The only reason I didn’t delete my social media is I knew I had to get a screenshot of the pictures I was receiving in order for the police and court to have evidence.”
Delays in the case meant Nasser was not sentenced until this month — more than two years after his offending between September and November 2022. Nasser, of Alicia Crescent, pleaded guilty to malicious communications. He was not charged under cyber-flashing legislation because the law making this a specific criminal offence did not come into force until January 2024, after the period of offending. He was ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work and pay compensation of £300 to the victim and £85 in prosecution costs.
The new offence known as cyber-flashing, under the Sexual Offences Act, carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. Last March a man from Essex was jailed for 66 weeks after he became the first person to be convicted under the new law. He had sent unsolicited images of his genitals to a 15-year-old girl and a woman. The then-justice secretary Alex Chalk KC said at the time: “Cyber-flashing is a degrading and distressing crime which cannot be tolerated or normalised. We’ve changed the law so those who perpetrate these vile acts face time behind bars, and today’s sentence sends an unequivocal message that such behaviour will have severe consequences.”
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