Coco's Law, Explained: Protecting Young People From Online Image Abuse
Most teenagers have a phone in their pocket and very little idea of where the law draws its lines. Here is what parents and teachers need to know about Coco's Law, and how to respond when something goes wrong.
Ask a class of fifteen-year-olds whether it is a crime to share a private photo of someone without their permission, and you will get a room full of shrugs. Ask whether it is a crime to threaten to share one, and most will be certain it is not. They are wrong on both counts, and the gap between what young people assume and what the law actually says is exactly where a great deal of harm happens.
Since 2021, the Republic of Ireland has had one of the strongest laws in Europe on this issue. It is formally called the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, but almost everyone knows it as Coco's Law.
The story behind the name
The law is named after Nicole "Coco" Fox, a young woman from Dublin who took her own life in 2018, aged 21, after years of sustained online and physical abuse. At the time, there was no law in Ireland capable of holding those responsible to account. Her mother, Jackie Fox, campaigned tirelessly for change, and Coco's Law is the result of that campaign.
It is worth saying plainly to students: this law exists because of a real young person, and because the people who hurt her could not be prosecuted under the rules that existed then. The law was written to make sure that gap could not be used again.
What Coco's Law actually makes illegal
The Act created two new criminal offences around what is often called image-based sexual abuse, or "revenge porn". The crucial point for young people is that the seriousness does not depend on whether anyone "meant it as a joke".
Two details matter most when you explain this to teenagers. First, the threat alone is a crime. A person does not have to actually send the image; saying "do this or I'll post your photo" is itself an offence. Second, consent is the whole question. An image that was shared willingly with one person was never consent to share it with anyone else.
The Act went further than images, too. It created a new offence of sending threatening or grossly offensive messages intended to cause harm, and it widened the law on harassment so that it now covers posting about a person, not only contacting them directly. The maximum sentence for harassment was raised to ten years. Victims of these offences also have a legal right to anonymity.
"It was only a threat" and "it was just a screenshot" are two of the most common things young people say. Both describe behaviour the law now treats as a crime.
Why this matters so much for young people
The situations Coco's Law covers are not rare or far-removed from the average classroom. They are the screenshot of a private message passed around a group chat. The "nude" sent in confidence to a partner that resurfaces after a break-up. And increasingly, sextortion: someone, often pretending to be a peer, persuades a young person to send an image and then threatens to share it unless they pay money or send more. Reports of this kind run into the hundreds in Ireland alone.
There is one further point that schools and parents should not soften. Where the person in the image is under 18, far more serious child protection laws also apply, on top of Coco's Law. Creating, holding or sharing a sexual image of a minor can amount to a child sexual abuse material offence, regardless of the age of the person who took or shared it. A teenager who forwards a classmate's nude is not committing a minor indiscretion; they may be committing a very serious crime. Young people deserve to understand that clearly, before rather than after.
For parents: the conversation, not the lecture
The most useful thing a parent can do is make sure their child already knows two things before anything happens: that sharing or threatening to share images is against the law, and that if something does go wrong, they can come to you without being blamed. Young people who fear punishment tend to stay silent, and silence is what predators and bullies rely on.
If your child is the one being targeted, they are the victim, full stop. Stay calm, reassure them, and resist the urge to seize the phone in anger; you may need what is on it.
For teachers: responding well
Schools are often the first place a disclosure lands, and how the first adult reacts sets the tone for everything that follows. Treat any report calmly and confidentially, follow your school's child protection procedures and Children First obligations, and route the matter to your Designated Liaison Person rather than trying to manage it informally. A young person who is met with judgement once will rarely disclose again.
- Don't blame the young person. They are the victim, even if they originally sent the image themselves.
- Preserve the evidence. Don't delete messages or images; screenshot with dates and usernames where you safely can.
- Report it to An Garda Síochána. Image-based abuse is a crime and can be reported at any Garda station.
- Get the content taken down. Hotline.ie can report and remove intimate-image content, including material hosted abroad.
- Support the person, not just the case. The emotional impact is real; make sure help is offered alongside any report.
A note for Northern Ireland
Coco's Law applies in the Republic of Ireland. Young people and schools in Northern Ireland are protected by separate but broadly comparable laws covering the disclosure of private sexual images and online harassment. The principles, and the conversations parents and teachers need to have, are the same on both sides of the border.
Knowledge is the best protection
Laws like this only work if young people know they exist before they need them. A teenager who understands that a threat is a crime, that a screenshot can be evidence, and that they will be supported rather than blamed, is far better protected than one who learns all of that the hard way. That is exactly what our in-school and online workshops are built to do: teach legal literacy directly, in plain language, before a young person ever needs it.