750,000 NL residents victims of online sexual harassment last year

Last year over 5 percent of Netherlands residents aged 16 or older were the victim of online sexual harassment. That amounts to over 750 thousand people. Young women and bisexual women were most likely to be sexually harassed online, Statistics Netherlands reported on Friday.

Online sexual harassment most often took the form of sexually offensive comments or jokes and unwanted nude photos or videos, with 2 percent of Netherlands residents over the age of 16 experiencing this. Harassers also often kept insisting on a date or kept sending personal sexual photos or videos. 

Women were more likely to be sexually harassed online than men, at 6.7 and 4.1 percent respectively. Bisexuals, especially bisexual women, and gay men were more often targeted than lesbians and heterosexuals. But young women were the most popular target of online sexual harassment, with 30 percent of 16 to 18 year olds and 23 percent of 18 to 24 year olds reporting being harassed. Among their male peers, it was 9 and 8 percent respectively. 

For a majority of the victims, the online sexual harassment was a once-off incident. But for 1 in 10 it happened on a structural basis. 84 percent of victims said they did not suffer any consequences from the harassment, but 13 percent did. 62 percent of victims told someone about the harassment, most of often a friend or their partner.