Margaret van Wyk has been trending on social media following the posting of an alleged image of her genitals online – but maybe what you don’t know is that you could be criminally charged for re-sharing that photo!
Word of advice… delete those posts and give the woman her dignity back before she sues you… yup, she can if she wants to.
According to reports, van Wyk posted a picture of her vagina, intended for her husband, on a hockey mothers’ WhatsApp group.
One of the group members reportedly took a screenshot of the image and posted it on social media.
The image trended nationally, under the hashtag #margaretvanwyk, with the image and linked posts being tweeted and reposted multiple times.
ECR spoke to Shepstone & Wylie social media law expert Verlie Oosthuizen about the incident, and asked who could face criminal charges for posting the image online.
“I would say that the people who posted it to social media do have some measure of legal liability. They have definitely infringed her privacy, they’ve definitely infringed her dignity,” said Oosthuizen.
“She would probably have some kind of a claim for cyber bullying. If I was in her shoes, I would probably approach the police and lay a charge of crimen injuria against the person who made the initial posting.”
“Legally speaking, everybody who posted that image has got some kind of measure of legal liability, but as it goes down the chain it becomes less and less strong,” she said.
“It’s the initial people that posted that picture that she would probably have a legal claim against.”
Oosthuizen said making a legal move against those people may inflame the matter, though, which could lead to van Wyk being under the spotlight of public attention for longer.
The world has still got a lot to learn when it comes to social media, and it seems 2016 is a big learning year for South Africa.
Our opinion, it doesn’t matter if she does sue… delete all the damn posts relating to this poor woman anyway, she’s a mom, a sister, a wife, a friend… give her, her dignity back.
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