Married At First Sight Australia’s most talked-about storyline this season involves bride Olivia Frazer finding a naked photo of co-star Domenica Calarco and showing it to co-stars without Calarco knowing.
Since the dinner party episode aired on the reality TV show last night — during which Calarco was made aware her co-stars had seen the nude image — many viewers have wondered whether Frazer circulating the OnlyFans pic without Calarco’s consent falls into ‘revenge porn‘ territory.
Frazer claimed she decided to Google her cast mate following her disagreement with Calarco last week during the couples’ retreat, and that’s how she stumbled upon the photo.
“When someone smashes a wine glass in your face, you Google them,” Frazer told MAFSA bride Tamara Djordjevic in last night’s dramatic episode.
Five other contestants on the show admitted to having seen the photo that had featured on Calarco’s OnlyFans account after Frazer had found it and shown it to them.
So, without making any judgments about Frazer’s conduct, based on the limited information we have gleaned from the MAFS episode, we thought it was worth exploring what amounts to revenge porn in the eyes of the law?
Firstly, we need to establish where the photo was taken from. On the show, Frazer said the image appeared on Calarco’s OnlyFans account. Let’s remember that OnlyFans is a platform that allows creators to create content and willingly share images of themselves on their own terms and charge for it. There are rules around sharing it beyond the platform if you haven’t paid for it.
The OnlyFans terms of service state: “You must not reproduce, distribute, modify, create derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, republish, download, store, or transmit any of the material on the website, except as follows: you may store files that are automatically cached by your Web browser for display enhancement purposes; and you may print or download one copy of a reasonable number of pages of the website for your own personal, non-commercial use and not for further reproduction, publication, or distribution.”
Secondly, in New South Wales, Australia (where the show was filmed) there are new offences in the Crimes Act 1900 that address the non-consensual sharing of intimate images (also known as revenge porn).
Section 91R of the Crimes Act states it’s “an offence for a person to intentionally record or distribute, or threaten to record or distribute, an intimate image of another person without that person’s consent”. Penalties include fines and a maximum three years’ jail time .
Thirdly, reports have emerged that Frazer didn’t actually source the photo from the OnlyFans account itself.
Daily Mail Australia claims it’s “established that Olivia actually sourced the nude photo of Domenica from her public Twitter account, which therefore means she was not sharing ‘revenge porn’”.
The publication claims that Calarco had used a Twitter profile to promote her OnlyFans and that this particular image was on that Twitter profile, and therefore already in the public domain.
In an interview following last night’s episode, Calarco said, “Sourcing an image and then circulating it to a group of people, that to me shows intent and malice.
“And if she [Olivia] can’t see that, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with her. The way I saw it, and the way I still see it to this day, is that it was done 100 per cent to cause me pain and to cause tension between Jack and I’s relationship.”
However, Frazer said in an interview that she did not have ill intentions when sharing the photo. “I didn’t come with any malice or judgement,” she said.
She also told said in another interview that it was quite easy to find the photo.
“I definitely didn’t see what was wrong with it until recently because I just thought like, it’s on the internet, it was advertised on several platforms, so I didn’t think it was some salacious secret,” she said.
“I definitely didn’t think that it was some sort of revenge or leverage that I had over Domenica. I literally just thought like, ‘Oh good on her making some extra cash, that’s fantastic’.”
Calarco found Frazer sharing the photo without her consent quite hurtful, and it’s a reminder of the importance of consent in sharing intimate images. Associate Professor Asher Flynn, a criminology professor at Melbourne’s Monash University, agrees.
“The only positive aspect of the show was the responses of fellow contestants Ella and Jack who strongly condemned the group for circulating the image without Dom’s knowledge or consent,” Professor Flynn said in a statement supplied to Refinery29 Australia.
“This is exactly the type of message we need to focus on — it all comes back to consent. If you don’t have the consent of the person in the image to re-distribute or share that image with anyone, you should not do it.”
At the time of publication, Channel 9 had not yet responded to Refinery29 Australia’s request for comment.
Disclaimer: Refinery29 Australia is published by Pedestrian Group, which is wholly owned by Nine Entertainment.
Married At First Sight continues on Channel 4
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