Source: China News Weekly
The quiet life of Mary Galati, a girl from Sicily, Italy, was completely broken by a screenshot of her mobile phone. Her life photos actually appeared on a "men-only" pornographic forum.
After encountering this sudden digital violence in 2023, Mary was forced to become a "detective" and a "warrior", using her male identity to sneak into a female "hunting ground" full of candid images, deep forgeries and systematic insults, and witnessed a "real digital hell."
Over the course of two years, Mary struggled repeatedly between complaints and silence, struggle and isolation. In August 2025, the storm escalated. Opposition leaders, stars, scholars, and even Italian Prime Minister Meloni have all become "spoils" on the platform. In the "Italian version of Room N" called Phica, they encountered theft of images, technical counterfeiting, unified coding, and anonymous fantasy.
An anti-digital violence campaign spread across Italy.
Nightmare
In May 2023, 24-year-old Mary Gallati received a message from a friend with a screenshot. Her photo was publicly hanged on a “only male” porn forum called Phica. Underneath the picture, there were hundreds of comments full of insults and sexual implications.
"It's like falling into a nightmare." Mary recalled in an interview with China News Weekly.
At that time, Mary lived in Chinisi, Sicily, Italy, engaged in catering, loved nature and music, had a warm family and a boyfriend who loved her deeply. Her social media account, like countless young girls, is just a corner to record life and share selfies.
“A friend is also a woman, and she herself has not logged in to that site.” Mary explained, “It’s a man’s territory, and she got a snapshot from a man who browsed the platform.”
After experiencing fear and anxiety, Mary decided to dive into the site. With the help of her family, she logged in with her male identity. The moment the page loaded and saw the picture on the screen, she was like falling into the ice cave and I saw a disgusting world,” Mary said.
It’s a systematic, divided-category digital hell of women’s “warriors.” The website is carefully divided into “my wife,” “my girlfriend,” “my sister,” “my daughter,” and even has a dedicated “shadow shot” section, which also teaches people how to install hidden cameras. Somebody asks, “I want to go to this store, can you tell me how to put the camera in the dressing room?”
Mary gave an example. A girl working in a bar was photographed without her knowledge. Her photo was posted along with her workplace, attracting more people to "check in" and adding more violent and sexually insulting comments. In other sections, women may know that they are being photographed by their partners or relatives, but never realize that these images will flow into such a space.
In Phica's distorted context, the most ordinary photographs of life are redefined. On the forum, photos of wives shared by husbands, sisters shared by brothers, and even photos of young daughters shared by fathers can become "discussion materials".
"Even if you make a cup of coffee early in the morning, photos like this can be the material for sexual comments," Mary said.
"I also saw fathers post pictures of their daughters in bathing suits and ask people, 'What do you think of my daughter?'" Mary cried. "That's the moment I realized: from a little girl to an 80-year-old grandmother, no woman is safe."
On social platforms, Mary only shared images of ordinary clothes and daily life, which were also stolen and transported to the forum. "Those are just ordinary photos of my life," she repeatedly emphasizes. "I have never taken nude photos or any special photos!"
The real fear comes after Mary finds herself long watched by a user named NESSUNO27, who frequently posts photos of Mary, pretends to be her ex-boyfriend, and discloses her full name, address and place of work.
Later, she realized that for a period of time in 2023, many requests for attention from strange men suddenly appeared on her social media account, which may be due to this.
For Mary, more than 400 comments were filled with threatening and rude words, like the same “digital-era delay.” “One wrote: ‘It’s a pity, I’m not a Sicilian, otherwise I’ll have to go to see her.’”
“I’m afraid that the men on those sites will hide around me and even start to doubt every male customer I encounter at work that they’re coming to ‘watch around me’ or not,” Mary said.
Counter-attack
Mary then communicated with her parents and joined another victim in the town, gathering footage and evidence, and submitting complaints to the local Gendarmerie and Postal Police Department.
But the complaints are like the sea of stones, and they have never received any substantive response.
Since 2023, Mary has never stopped complaining and constantly reminded girls in the same situation to know about the existence of the Phica forum. She also actively contacted victims from all over Italy to encourage them to complain and support each other. It was a bit disappointing for Mary that many girls knew about the site but refused to complain.
Mary gradually realized that she was facing not only malicious users, but also deeper institutional neglect. "This site has been around since 2005 and has hundreds of thousands of users in 2023."
In 2023, Mary launched an online petition calling for the closure of the Phica website, but initially there was little response.
Earlier, Italian research scientist and gender sociologist Sylvia Sementzine and her colleague Lucia Benotti had been concerned about the existence of Phica. Sementzine told China News Weekly that in 2019, the site had more than 100,000 registered users, they complained to the postal police, the relevant research reports also wrote, but no agency really care.
Semenzin pointed out that there has been a long-standing "deliberate avoidance" attitude at the Italian political level."At that time, the relevant departments responded that they only wanted to deal with individual cases and were unwilling to admit that it was a systemic problem."
In 2019, a study by the University of Milan showed that one in five women in Italy experienced involuntary intimate image spread.
"When this happened to me, after anger, I realized I had to act," Semenzin said. In the same year, she launched the "intimate violence" campaign, developing from an online petition to a national political initiative, eventually pushing Italy to add new provisions to the criminal law, defining the dissemination of intimacy images without consent as a crime, with a maximum sentence of six years in prison. This provision, known as the "Porno Revenge Act", is considered an important milestone in the protection of Italian women's digital rights.
However, Semenzin stressed that the introduction of a single clause does not mean real protection. She explained: "Under this clause, victims must prove that the publisher has 'intent to harm,' which is almost impossible in an anonymous, group-based online environment."
She also cited the fact that the law stipulates “heavier punishments when the victim is a pregnant woman” but never mentions the minor victims, which she sees as “a serious imbalance from a legislative perspective.”
The survival and expansion of Phica is exposing the gaps and limitations of the law. After the adoption of the “Porno Revenge Act” in 2019, the site removed the “Porno Revenge” block, but retained other content. In a few years, the number of members rose from 100,000 to 700,000.
Meanwhile, AI technology threats are upgrading at an unprecedented rate. As early as 2019, Semenzing investigations found that there are AI programs that can automatically “nude” women’s photos. With the explosive growth of generated AI, deep-fake pornography content has surged by more than 500% in recent years and can generate real fake pornography videos with just a few clicks.”
In Semenzin's view, the problem has never been technology, but a lack of social will and political action. Semenzin organized and held relevant seminars, and the postal police also participated in the meeting and discussed the matter with MP Laura Bordrini, but no substantive action was taken. "If high-level officials had listened to the warning six years ago, the pain of many women like Mary could have been avoided."
Mary chose to be the one who continued to speak out. Since 2023, she has embarked on a lonely "digital demining" operation, continuing to complain, collect clues, and proactively contacting victims exposed on Phica. Over the past two years, she contacted more than 1000 women and helped about 300 of them delete stolen images.
What angered her was that Phica’s operators even launched a “removal service,” asking the victim to pay €145 ($1,100) to remove the infringed content, and it was clear that we didn’t do anything wrong.”
storm
The turning point appeared in August 2025.This digital violence spread to the “power center.”
From Italian Prime Minister Meloni to opposition leader Schlein, more than 20 female politicians have been victims. Their faces were pasted or synthesized into pornographic images and were watched, forwarded and ridiculed by hundreds of thousands of people.
The incident was first revealed by two Democratic women politicians, MPs Alexandra Moretti and Valeria Campania publicly accused that their photos appeared in Phica's "popular politicians" district, in which there are even sub-pages named after their names, from swimwear photos, private life photos, to enlarged and tampered synthetic images, the subtitles naked exhibit insult and materialization: "I want to look at her legs" "her chest condition is good."
"I feel disgusted, angry, disappointed, but I must not remain silent." Campania wrote,"Because it's not just about me personally, but about whether all women can live freely, with dignity and without fear."
Moretti also discovered that her years of public television footage had been intercepted, manipulated and uploaded to the platform. She subsequently filed a criminal lawsuit and became the first female politician to respond to the case with legal action.
As the public opinion rapidly fermented, police received dozens of complaints in a short time, and social media was filled with anger and accusations. Further investigations showed that the victims were far more than two female politicians. Phica’s so-called “VIP district” included not only Meloni, the opposition leader Shrine, but also photos of more than twenty female ministers and lawmakers.
"These platforms not only incite rape and violence, but also directly threaten women's safety and must be completely shut down." Moretti wrote angrily in his statement.
Meloni broke his silence in the face of public criticism. "It is unacceptable that in 2025, there are still people dressed in anonymity who trample on women's dignity." "Those seemingly harmless photos, once in the wrong hands, can become terrible weapons," she said in an interview.
Meloni called on all women to bravely complain about spreading private images without consent, adding: "I am extremely disgusted by all of this. I express my solidarity with all women who have been insulted and harmed in this digital violence. We must find the perpetrators and impose the most severe punishment."
Driven by public opinion, the silent victims finally began to speak out. With the help of the politician effect and the amplification of Social networks, victims began to unite, from high-level power to ordinary women. "It's different this time." Semenzin told China News Weekly.
Mary also realized that the opportunity had finally come.She began to rearrange her experience, posting high-frequency posts on the major social media, posting 20 messages almost daily, telling about her encounters, and driving the spread of petitions.
On an online platform, a petition calling for Phica to be closed collected 170,000 signatures in less than a week. Women of different ages and backgrounds from all over Italy left messages telling their experiences. Anger and resonance spread like wildfire.
On August 28th, Mary finally waited for an official statement: Phica website had been permanently closed for violating laws related to privacy and sexual violence.
Worrying
But the closure of Phica website did not dispel the shadow in Mary's heart. She clearly knows that Phica website is only one link in a huge network of pornographic violence, and there are countless unexposed websites and social media groups that are still growing in the dark.
Further disturbing was Phica’s gesture of shutting down the statement. The platform blamed everything on its users’ “malign behavior,” claiming it “distorted the platform’s original intentions,” and promised to remove all content. However, this seemingly regrettable statement ended with a crying expression and a “goodbye soon” phrase, “little, indifferent, and even a bit of ridicule.”
This ambiguous "farewell" can't bring comfort to any victim. As one of the victims, Democratic congressman Laura Boldrini denounced this statement as "embarrassing". In her view, the operator is well aware of the long-standing infringement. The problem isn't individual users, it's a deeply ingrained toxic culture. These forums contribute to this culture. Boldrini also said that he would file a lawsuit again and called on Italian society to stop remaining silent about misogynistic violence.
Under pressure from the public opinion, on September 17, the Italian parliament passed the Artificial Intelligence Framework Act, which stipulates that images or videos generated without consent can be sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison if they cause damage.
But according to Mary Garrett, the law is unlikely to actually apply to anyone.
Semenzing is of the same opinion. She pointed out that the bill still lacks a “substantial digital and gender perspective.” Such legislation is often a post-scandal-fermented stress response aimed at calming public opinion rather than protecting women. If there is no deep involvement of victim protection agencies with women’s rights organizations, the law will only become a paper “symbolic consolation.”
In addition, even if there are laws to follow, judicial practice will still face obstacles such as difficulty in proving evidence, vague definition of "pornographic content", and difficulty in tracing the chain of responsibility.
"In short, the victim can get lost in a loophole in the law while the perpetrator remains unpunished." It's often the websites that cause uproar that get the attention, but that's just the tip of the iceberg, Semenzin says. More images are quietly circulating through unknown websites, football groups on social media, company chat groups and fitness groups. The driving force behind it is naked interests, such as traffic, clicks, advertisements and data transactions.
In Semenzing's view, the real way out lies in systematic reforms, "we urgently need a comprehensive bill against digital violence."The UK has classified the production of deep-false pornography without consent as a criminal offence, and Italy has not yet begun seriously discussing the issue.
"Phica's closure may be just a weak victory. The real battle has just begun." Semenzin said.
More and more victims choose to delete their accounts and get out of the network, but Mary, who has struggled for more than two years, chooses to continue, and I understand them, but I can’t retreat.”Mary said, “We shouldn’t be afraid of our own lives, nor should we be afraid of sharing photos. It should be a shame, it’s never us, but those who exploit our fears.
At present, Mary is still waiting for a result. After receiving the preliminary report from the local postal police, the Roman prosecutor's office will formally open a case on Mary's appeal.
Published in the 1209th issue of China News Weekly magazine on October 27, 2025
Magazine title: Italy's 'anti-digital sexual violence' storm
Reported by: Zheng Li