On May 14, 2019, Patricia Franquesa sat down to eat a calamari sandwich in a bar, her laptop was stolen and two months later she received a email: “Hi Patricia. Unfortunately this is not an email spam. It’s a serious topic. I have hacked your pc. Don’t be scared. Everything will be fine. You don’t know me, nor do I know you. I mean no harm, if you follow this. You have to deposit 2,400 US dollars to the following bitcoin account. I have lists of all your work contacts, social networks, passwords of emails and access to virtual material. I found this (photos attached) and I’m sure you don’t want all your contacts between family, friends and professional relationships to see this.” “This” were three photos of his vagina. “All his contacts” were around 1,100. And Franquesa, on the other side of the Zoom from Barcelona, where she was born in 1989, says that she immediately called the Mossos d’Esquadra.
“I had the immediate need to say ‘help.’ My mother taught me that if someone touched me on the bus, she had to say very loudly ‘sir, don’t touch me’. So she would embarrass him, she would leave and alert the others. It was that instinct,” he narrates this past May 14, just five years after the robbery. He says that “it closes a cycle” but that it is, in reality, “a beginning.”
Franquesa, a documentary filmmaker, did not know when she called the Mossos that what had just happened to her had a name. She found out right after making the report, when the agents recommended that she “send a email to all his contacts” alerting them that they could receive those images, he sat down to write that email and “I didn’t really know what to put.” She started searching the internet: “I’m starting to see this happening all over the world and I’m starting to have a lot of questions. And I tell myself that if I have so many questions, it’s a documentary.”
So, that day, he knew what the Sextortion, a crime that consists of blackmailing someone to do something specific in exchange for not making their sexual content public. And also like that, that day, he was born Diary of my sextortion (Gadela Films, Ringo Media), Franquesa’s latest work, which hits theaters on May 31. He opened a folder which he called Digital Vagina and began to put everything away.
It has served her not only to go through the process, but to know and make known what Spanish legislation – such as the Law of Sexual Freedom and the Comprehensive Protection of Children and Adolescents – considers sexual violence, one of those that are committed in the digital sphere and that are growing more and more.
In Spain, the ministry data, to which this newspaper has had access, registers an exponential increase: 1,691 complaints in 2018, 1,199 in 2019, 1,923 in 2020, 2,649 in 2021, 3,219 in 2022 and 4,460 in 2023. The number grows year after year and although it can happen to anyone, the most frequent victims are young women and minors. Franquesa recalls that “the attack” against women through their sexuality “is common.” “We have always been the sexual elements of society. But I also saw that there were a lot of statistics that talked about teenagers,” she says.
Whoever the victims are, blackmail has more common objectives, such as economic or financial goals—getting money from the victim—or control, which happens when the perpetrator is someone they know or are partners or ex-partners. Franquesa’s case was one of the economic ones and, although there are those who end up paying thinking that this will end the blackmail, that does not usually happen and those who coerce continue to insist.
In August of that year, 2019, the documentary filmmaker received another email: “Hello, Patricia, how was your vacation? I’m about to upload the photos to a website. I have not received a response from him, the bitcoin wallet is still empty, so tomorrow a quarter of his network will receive a message with what you already know if you do not make the payment. Do you want to negotiate? Let’s negotiate. But you have until tomorrow, in this email. Please don’t make me do this, pay now and we’ll get it over with. Offer a figure.”
![One of the moments from the documentary 'Diary of my Sextortion'.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/BF7ZVYMNF5D4VA2M5AHLVSHSIQ.jpg?auth=18519d0965f55a20b8a27e3a6dc6ce1affde383c9a0352b7d01e58018f79a286&width=414)
Franquesa remembers how she thought a lot about “what situations can make someone so vulnerable as to think about paying or giving in to what is asked.” She did not give in, those photos began to be sent to some of her contacts, who were notifying her of what was coming to them, and the hacker He continued writing to her: “We will continue until this counter is no longer at zero. I will go for more contacts, Facebook and Instagram. Those on Instagram are very easy, with a private message everyone will see it.”
And she made a decision: to publish those three photos of her vagina herself. To regain control, in some way: “When you are in a police and judicial process in which you are a legal victim, you feel more exposed and vulnerable. It was a way to regain power.”
It was not “easy”, but she sat down and prepared a post for her social networks: “I am being blackmailed by a gang of criminals. My computer was stolen with all my files inside. They are asking me for money so as not to share it with you. They have already sent emails and messages to extort me in such a way that I feel so ashamed of my body that I end up paying. So I want to post the photos myself. Please, if you receive any message or email It’s strange on any social network where my name appears, tell me, and don’t delete the message.”
It was also a way of asking for help: “To say, ‘hey, this is happening to me, help me, so I have more evidence that I can take to the police.’ The response was immediate, an avalanche of messages. A friend wrote her “how lucky you are to have so much support.” She cried: “It makes you feel like you have a safety net around you. Family, friends, are very important.”
Now, five years later, the Mossos have still not found the extortionist, and, although the Madrid police arrested and convicted one of the two men who stole the computer, they have never known if he was “connected to the hacker”. For her, “the story is still alive because she still has access to a multitude of data such as ID, online documents, passwords.”
Franquesa thinks about many things around this. In the lack of protection of privacy on-line; in those who asked her why she had those photos on the computer, as if she were responsible; in boys, girls, and adolescents who are subjected to this violence. In legal channels that sometimes are not enough to solve the problem. Also “in that telling it, sharing it, is tremendously important because if not, you isolate yourself much more, you are more vulnerable, much more fragile and more accessible to manipulation.” And in “how violence goes from the skin to the screen. It seems cleaner, it is more psychological, but the damage is the same.”
Telephone 016 assists victims of sexist violence, their families and those around them 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not registered on the telephone bill, but the call must be deleted from the device. You can also contact via email [email protected] and by WhatsApp at the number 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation telephone number 900 20 20 10. If it is an emergency situation, you can call 112 or the National Police telephone numbers (091) and the Civil Guard (062). And if you cannot call, you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.
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