Emotional Harm
Criminal
Where your experience of catfishing has emotionally lead to you feeling a loss of independence due to controlling behaviour from the perpetrator, distorted self trust due to gaslighting, isolation and withdrawal, and fear, you may be a victim of Coercive Controlling Behaviour and have legal protection under the Serious Crime Act 2015.
There is an offence under section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 that is relevant for catfishing. It has also been invoked in the well known catfishing case of Sweet Bobby. In Sweet Bobby the catfishes committed the following incidents:
- Created many fake social media profiles to make the identity believable.
– Voice manipulation during calls to disguise identity.
-Isolation from family and friends: subtle manipulation to break contact with support systems
-Monitoring and control over movement and location at all times
-Controlling and dictating life decisions, such as making her leave her job
- Caused severe distress through intimidation and control
This offence seeks to punish coercive and controlling behaviour. This is unfortunately not applicable where the perpetrator has responsibilities over the victim who are children. The behaviour that is controlling or coercive must cause the victim to fear that violence will be used against them on two occasions or serious alarm/distress which has substantial adverse effects for the victims daily life. It is also the case that the perpetrator must have a personal connection to the victim, this can take the form of an intimate relationship, relatives, civil partners, spouses, fiancés, or another person who has a parental relationship with the same child. Whilst these are all of the requirements, there is a defence to be wary of. It must be the case that the perpetrator thought that it was in the best interest of the victim and that it was reasonable, and this defence is not available if fear of violence was involved in the commission of the offence.
If your situation of catfishing is paired with (but not limited to), a pattern of manipulation, threats, humiliation, intimidation, isolation, you may be a victim of Coercive Controlling Behaviour.
There are many cases that describe coercive and controlling behavior but there are few that are catfishing based, If you are more interested in information we suggest the cases of R v Willey, Regina v Chilvers (Peter), and F v M.
Civil Law
In the case you want to purse civil action there is a tort which may be of relevance with emotional harm. The Tort of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. Unlike what it is called there is no need for it to be intentional, the lowest mental requirement is negligence. The qualifications that are a bit more important is that the distress is caused by extreme or outrageous conduct and the harm it causes must be severe.
Unfortunately there is not much in the way of guidance for the definitions of severe and extreme or outrageous. If you are interested in more information the main cases for the common law tort are O v A [2015] UKSC 32 and Wainwright v Home Office.
Another relevant tort is the tort regarding Misuse of private information. The important aspects of this tort is that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, there is a much storied history for what this means, but relevant for catfishing is the circumstances surrounding the attainment of the information, also where the activity took place, and the nature of the activity. In the case of sextortion or any other such situations there will almost always be found to be an expectation of privacy. This assessment of expectation or privacy will be by the standards of an ordinary and reasonable person. The next criteria is that the freedom of your right to privacy prevails over a balancing test with the perpetrators right to freedom of speech, this should not be a concern in situations like this though.
If you are interested in more information regarding this good cases are Murray v Express Newspapers plc and Von Hannover v German. Also it would be of interest to read Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
One last relevant tort is the tort of breach of confidence. For the most part is has been replaced by the above tort but it still has some use. This is also of the most use in case of misuse of private information. The relevant parts of this tort is that the information concerned had a quality of confidence, that the circumstances imposed a duty of confidence and that there was a threatened or unauthorized use of this information. This is clearly the case in situations like sextortion or blackmail related to catfishing.
In case you are interested in more information regarding this the case of Attorney General v Observer and Guardian Newspapers ltd.