Brochure warns military service members not to shame themselves by sharing nude photos

The U.S. military has a big problem with revenge porn. But a brochure making the rounds on at least one military base, in New Jersey, places the blame squarely on the service members in the pictures, not the people sharing them.

The brochure, found among dozens of others on a table at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, does not have any Department of Defense attribution on it, nor does it bear the U.S. Army logo. It does, however, offer phone numbers for the DOD Safe Helpline and the Sexual Harassment and Assault Response/Prevention Office hotline on the joint base, which houses Army and Air Force personnel. The U.S. Army did not immediately respond to VICE News’ request for comment, and it is not clear whether the brochure has circulated on other U.S. bases.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Lauren Russell, who works on the base, said they were still searching for the exact source of the brochure, and pointed to the fact that the military had revised policies against sexting, where sharing an inappropriate photo could be considered sexual harassment.

The company whose name is on the brochures, Global Promotional Sales, told VICE News they ordered them from an educational company and hadn’t printed them in roughly two years. They specifically said the U.S. military had not paid for them but couldn’t confirm how they ended up on a U.S. military installation.

“Either they [the military] proactively approved terrible content or there was a dereliction of their fiduciary duty to the taxpayer,“ a former congressional staffer told VICE News. “It’s an oversight issue. It should be important enough that they are hands-on with this.”

The pamphlet bears a remarkable resemblance to one offered by a company called Primo Prevention, which sells a “Stay Safe series” of pamphlets addressing sexual assault in the military and PTSD, among other topics. The brochure Primo offers has the exact same sections, subheads, advice, and the exact same story about a sergeant who sexted a recruit.

"That brochure is not our brochure," Wayne Vicknair, the president of Primo Prevention told VICE News. Vicknair said they were asked to design it but never sold it directly to the military. Vicknair also said that after the VICE News story initially came out, he pulled the brochure off of their site.

The brochure offers no advice on how to get a photo removed, how to report someone who has shared a photo of you without your consent, or the fact that Congress made the sharing of nonconsensual photos a crime for the military in December.

The brochure focuses on people who send their own images, rather than the people who share them — a pervasive issue in the military — warning readers that “having your explicit photos leaked could result in your friends not wanting to associate with you."

READ: The Pentagon hasn’t stopped the military’s revenge porn problem.

The brochure also advises on a range of social costs that can accompany sexting, including:

• “The consequences that come with sexting can cause a person to feel hopeless and depressed, sometimes even resulting in suicide.”

• “Just one photo could end up defining who you are for a long time.”

• “Your friends and family could be put in an uncomfortable situation because they overhear others talking about you. It may be easier for friends to cut ties with you than be involved with the situation."

• “Since you sexted before, others may approach you asking for more,” and, ”Others may only want to date you because they think you will send them indecent photos or clips.”

• In one section, titled “A Ruined Career,” the pamphlet shows a story about a sergeant who shared a photo with a recruit, who then shared it non-consensually, circulating the photo around the unit. The story ends with a lesson for the sergeant, rather than the recruit: “All of this could have been prevented if he had just chosen not to 'sext.'"

As a piece of advice to turn down a possible sext, the brochure suggests saying, “My wife checks my text messages; I don’t want her reading your request,” among other options, like ignoring the message or saying you’re uncomfortable with it.

The brochure comes at a time of heightened awareness of revenge porn in the U.S. military. A VICE News investigation in February found that dozens of informal military social media groups were still sharing explicit and non-consensual photos of service members despite multiple efforts by the Pentagon and technology companies to shut them down a year ago.

Users are also going to further lengths to access, trade, and comment on photos of service members online. VICE News last month reported on the persistence of an anonymous photo-sharing platform, AnonIB, that continues to host a thread specifically dedicated to photos of service members organized by base. NCIS told VICE News at the time it had reviewed the photos but had not found any instances that met the criminal threshold.

READ: Military revenge porn is thriving on anonymous servers and image boards. That makes it harder to stop.