Victim Impact Statement Example: AI-Generated Image Abuse (Deepfakes)

This is a fictional example of a victim impact statement written after AI-generated image abuse, sometimes called deepfake abuse. It follows the ten sections used in the Justice Draft guided form.

In this example, Bec discovers that a man from her friendship group used ordinary photos from her social media to create sexually explicit AI-generated images of her, and shared them online.

Creating and sharing sexually explicit deepfakes without consent is a crime in Australia. Commonwealth laws passed in 2024 cover AI-generated sexual material, and every state and territory has intimate image offences, most of which extend to images that have been altered or digitally created.

Whether or not anyone is charged, the eSafety Commissioner can require platforms to remove intimate images of you, including deepfakes. The service is free at esafety.gov.au.

If this has happened to you, the shame you might be feeling belongs to the person who did it, not to you. Take this page slowly.

Victim Impact Statement of Bec Lawson

This is a fictional example created by Justice Draft. All names, people and events are invented.

How I felt at the time

My friend Georgia came to my house on a Sunday night and said she needed to show me something. It was my face. My face on sexually explicit images of other women's bodies, posted in a group chat and on a website. For the first few minutes I could not understand what I was looking at. My first thought was that I must have been drugged and photographed. But then I recognised the photos they had been made from. One was from my sister Hannah's wedding. One was my staff profile photo. Understanding that the images were fake did not bring the relief people might expect. I sat on my kitchen floor and shook. I was confused. This thing that wasn't even real made me feel more violated than I had ever felt before.

Emotional wellbeing

People keep telling me the images are not really me. They say it to comfort me but it just makes me feel misunderstood. My face was stolen. Everyone who saw those pictures believed they were seeing me. I'm the one that has to sit in that shame. I have panic attacks now, mostly when my phone buzzes with a message from a number I don't know. The worst part is the not knowing. I stand in front of my class, or in line at the shops, and I wonder who has seen them. That question follows me into every room I walk into.

Relationships

The man who did this sat at my dinner table. He was part of my friendship group for six years, and he did this after I turned him down. Some of the men in that group chat saw the images and said nothing. My friendship circle did not survive that. Georgia told me, and I will never forget that she did. Telling my parents was one of the worst days of my life. I had to explain to my dad what a deepfake was, using my own face as the example. I have not dated since. Every time I imagine meeting someone new, I imagine them searching my name.

Physical health

I have barely slept properly in a year. I lost eight kilos in the first two months because I could not eat. My eczema, which I had not had since high school, came back across my hands and neck. My GP has seen me more this year than in the previous five years combined. My body reacts to my phone vibrating the way other people react to a loud bang.

Financial impact

I am a primary school teacher. I took six weeks of leave when the images surfaced, some of it unpaid, because I could not stand in front of a classroom while I did not know how far they had spread. I paid seven hundred dollars to an online removal service before I learned the eSafety Commissioner could help for free. There have been psychologist gap fees every week for a year, legal advice, and a new phone number. The money is the smallest part of what this cost, but it is not nothing on a teacher's wage.

Daily life and routine

I deleted eight years of photos in one afternoon. Every account I have is locked down or gone. I do not post anything any more, and when someone raises a phone at a party, I turn away. I search my own name most nights before bed. I know I should stop. I cannot yet. At school I catch myself scanning the faces of parents at pick up, wondering.

Sense of safety

This did not happen in a place I can avoid. It happened on the internet, which is also where my school shares its newsletters, where my friends organise dinners, and where the rest of my life happens. I cannot leave. He needed nothing but photos I had already shared and an afternoon at a laptop, and I cannot take those photos back. So the fear does not fade the way I am told fear is supposed to. The images were mostly taken down. I live with the word mostly. I was not hurt by a stranger. I was hurt by someone I trusted, and my sense of who is safe has been broken ever since.

Spiritual and cultural wellbeing

I used to believe my face belonged to me. That sounds strange until it stops being true. Photos were how I held onto the people I love, and for a long time after this, every photo of myself made me feel sick, including the ones from Hannah's wedding. I am slowly taking that back. I print the photos that matter now and keep them in albums, off the internet. It is my quiet way of saying that my memories are still mine.

Who I was before this happened

Before this I was the one holding the camera at every family event, and the one hamming it up in front of it. I shared my life online happily, like everyone my age does. I was confident, social and easy to know. I loved my job and never thought twice about my staff photo being on the school website. I trusted my friends completely. I am still warm with the people close to me, but the open version of me is gone, and I miss her.

What I want the court or assessor to know

I never took the images that were shared of me. I should not have to say that, but I have had to say it over and over for a year, to Police, to my employer, to my parents. The images are fake. The harm is not. Every person who saw them saw me.

It took him one afternoon to make them. It has taken a year of my life to deal with what he made, and I will be managing it for the rest of my life, because I can never be certain they are gone.

He did this because I said no to him. The computer was just the way he chose to punish me. I ask the court to see it that way, and to sentence it as the deliberate act it was. I also ask for orders that all material be destroyed and that he never contact me again. And I want anyone who thinks this is a joke or a prank to hear clearly, from a court, that it is a crime.