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Olimpia Coral campaigns for digital women's rights in Mexico
Photo: Maria Fernanda Ruiz
Olimpia Coral always thought that she would become a "good woman" who would get married, have children - and otherwise "shut her legs", as she says.
She was just 18 years old when suddenly everyone knew what she looked like naked.
Her boyfriend at the time had passed on intimate photos of her, but you cannot recognize him on them.
First, the video spread like wildfire via Facebook and WhatsApp through the idyllic, conservative town of Huauchinango in the Mexican state of Puebla, where Coral grew up.
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Hundreds of thousands of perpetrators: those affected by digital violence are repeatedly victims
Photo: Daniel Becerril / REUTERS
Then newspapers took up the alleged sex scandal, reported on the good student who was now allegedly "burned", and luridly presented her body on title pages.
Her name became a hashtag, users talked about Olimpia Coral on social networks, porn sites published copies - and hundreds of thousands of friends and strangers watched the video and shared it.
"It feels like a rape without your body being touched," says Coral, now in her late twenties, in a telephone interview - "over and over again."
Machismo and acts of violence of all kinds against women are commonplace in Mexico.
Thousands of women are brutally murdered every year;
domestic violence and homicides have increased further in the pandemic.
Society often blames those affected - because they behaved incorrectly, traveled alone, met with men in the first place, or dressed in a suggestive manner.
To denounce such misogyny and femicides, a large women's movement has formed in Latin America in recent years, which took to the streets loudly and regularly until the corona crisis.
In Mexico, activists and victims continued to protest in the middle of the pandemic and occupied the offices of numerous human rights commissions.
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Thousands of Mexican women took to the streets for women's rights on March 8, 2020
Photo: FRANCISCO GUASCO / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
On the other hand, there is still too little discussion around the world about the comparatively new phenomenon of digital violence - even though sexual assaults on the Internet such as harassment and threats of rape, the dissemination of personal data or nude photos or surveillance using technical aids such as spy software have brutal consequences.
Perpetrators destroy the reputation and self-esteem of women, they stalk and threaten them online or use digital information to stalk those affected in everyday life.
Violent partners sometimes even terrorize their wives with smart devices such as loudspeakers or heaters or play spy apps on their cell phones or their children's phones - so that they can locate the victims even if they escape to the women's shelter.
The recently published report "Free to be online?"
According to Plan International, more than half of the 14,000 girls and young women surveyed worldwide have experienced harassment or abuse online.
They can no longer be active and express themselves on the Internet without being addressed or monitored.
As a result, one in four people no longer feels physically safe.
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Harassment, abuse, blackmail: many girls and women experience the Internet as an unsafe place
Photo: Silvia Izquierdo / AP
This digital violence is also apparently growing at the moment: Olimpia Coral and fellow campaigners are collecting incidents in Mexico - before the corona crisis, an average of three cases per day were reported to her, now there are five to eight cases a day.
"A large part of our life and our intimacy shifted to the Internet during the crisis," says Coral - at the same time the potential for abuse is increasing.
When the video of Olimpia Coral became public, classmates, colleagues at work, but also passers-by on the street made fun of her - and blamed her for the existence of such a recording.
She lost her job as an assistant at a local party for allegedly being a bad influence.
Men asked her to have sex and downloaded their Facebook photos.
"People hypersexualized me, they didn't see me as a victim at all or what happened as violence," said Coral.
"But the virtual is real."
She locked herself at home for months, feeling like a criminal - thinking about killing herself.
It was only when she realized that similar things had happened to many girls and women, and discovered more and more sites online where intimate pictures of women were exhibited and rated, did she realize that she was a victim, not a perpetrator.
"As a girl from a poor, indigenous family in a conservative environment, I haven't understood for a long time that I have a right to intimacy," says Olimpia Coral.
"Back then I needed someone to tell me that I don't have to be afraid - and that it is not my fault, but a crime, to share the video without my consent."
In conversation she appears combative, open and energetic, has a strong voice and often laughs loudly - as a girl she was told time and again to be quieter, only "vulgar women" would laugh that loud.
In Huauchinango, it is considered improper for girls and young women to stand around in front of school or in front of the house - like prostitutes.
"You grow up with these clichés - and what you least want is to be one of the whores, the bad women and exhibitionists," recalls Coral.
"I also thought that feminists are just women who hate men."
Olimpia asked her mother to help her die
She was terrified that her family would see the video and tried to keep its existence a secret.
Her mother is illiterate and does not use the Internet - but on a Sunday, her then 14-year-old brother outed her by placing his smartphone on the table and simply playing the video.
When her mother began to cry, Olimpia Coral cried with her, threw herself on her knees, apologized to her and asked her to help her die.
The reaction surprised her: her mother replied that they would all have sex.
"The only difference," said her mother, "is that you can now be seen having sex."
Olimpia is not a bad person because of that.
"The women from my family were the first not to judge me, but to support me."
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"Bad women": Many girls grow up with conservative images of women
Photo: ULISES RUIZ / AFP
Coral made up her mind to go to the police.
While she was sitting in front of an officer at the desk, he watched the video, brought in colleagues - and once again her intimate life was shown in front of strangers, only this time she had to watch.
Then the policeman asked her if she had used drugs, was she drunk?
She said no.
Did she have sex because she wanted to?
"I said yes and felt like a criminal again," recalls Coral.
He replied that there was nothing he could do - because sharing the video was not a criminal offense.
All that remained was to flee forward.
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Olimpia Coral shares her experience to help others - and fights for stricter laws
Photo: Mario Arturo Martinez / imago / ZUMA Press
Shortly afterwards, in her early twenties, Coral fled from the province to the capital Mexico City. At that time she had no job, no money, slept with friends - but she felt understood for the first time while "everyone in Puebla cursed me".
Together with other victims, lawyers and women who work with victims of violence, she founded the feminist collective "Frente Nacional para la Sororidad" (National Front for Sorority).
Olimpia Coral and her colleagues ally with local women's movements and analyze which forms of digital violence occur - then they urge politicians to reform the law.
With the "Ley Olimpia", a reform package that bears Olimpia's name, digital violence is recorded as a crime for the first time and punished with fines - from fines to several years in prison.
Not only perpetrators who create photos, videos or sound recordings with intimate, sexual content without consent or unauthorized redistribution of material produced by agreement, but also those who make themselves complicit by disseminating, reproducing or commercializing such recordings.
Puebla, the state from which Coral had to flee, was ultimately the first state to introduce the "Ley Olimpia" at the end of 2018.
In the meantime, 27 of 31 states in Mexico have adopted the reform - Coral wants to enforce it nationwide.
In addition, she says there is often a lack of effective protocols that guide police officers on how to proceed with digital crimes and how to deal with those affected.
In her new life, Olimpia Coral is a full-time activist, making a living from workshops and lectures on digital violence.
She is difficult to reach and often works late into the night.
Sometimes she and her fellow activists are insulted or even beaten up, and sometimes she wants to throw them down because they are met with so much hatred, says Coral.
"In this country people get upset when women decide for themselves how they want to live and assert themselves, that's why they threaten us with violence," believes Coral.
"This video almost cost me my life, now it's my drive to move on."
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Olimpia Coral is now a full-time activist
Photo: Mario Arturo Martinez / imago / ZUMA Press
She has broken off contact with most of her old friends from Huauchinango, she hates going there because the city holds so many bad memories for her.
She only speaks regularly to her family, most of all she misses her grandmother, who she cannot visit due to the pandemic.
"Sometimes I think my family doesn't really understand what I'm doing here," she says.
"But I know that you are proud of me."
With regard to the "Ley Olimpia", the first trials are already underway, and the first penalties have been imposed in at least four states.
In June 2020, around a 24-year-old was sentenced to a three-year prison term, a fine and compensation for the victims.
He had sold nude photos of female students at his university on social networks.
For Olimpia Coral, the "Ley Olimpia" is not just a legal text, but a movement that makes digital violence visible and aims to change the view of women and their intimacy - and a personal triumph.
Because even those who have long declared her crazy should now agree to her.
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