Nora agreed to speak after responding to an online BIRN questionnaire concerning slutshaming – a phenomenon defined by the European Institute for Gender Equality, EIGE, as “stigmatising women and girls on the basis of their appearance, sexual availability, and actual or perceived sexual behaviour”.

Sipping tea on a cold December day in Pristina, she said the abuse had restarted, this time on TikTok, where an account with over 3,300 followers and 96,000 likes had taken photos of her and her boyfriend from their social media profiles and reshared them as video slideshows with derogatory comments.

As of February, the account featured 142 videos with more than eight million views, in many cases abusing Kosovo girls or women, including Nora and her friends.

Based on content analysis and interviews with experts, BIRN has found that TikTok is being used across the Balkans to abuse women and girls for the most ordinary of activities – taking pictures, making videos, going out or dancing.

Over the course of several weeks, BIRN identified 427 videos posted between September 2020 and November 2023 and which ‘slutshame’ girls and women; the videos were shared by accounts in Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia. In total, the videos have been viewed more than 30 million times, each garnering dozens, sometimes hundreds of abusive comments.

None of the eight countries analysed defines cyberbullying as a separate criminal offence, meaning that slutshaming must be punished under other criminal violations such as gender-based hate speech, stalking, or the unauthorised sharing of someone else’s photos.

In late October, the European Parliament’s women’s rights and gender equality committee called for the phenomenon to be defined within legislation on hate speech and hate crime. Of the eight countries analysed for this story, only Croatia and Slovenia are members of the EU.

Altin Hazizaj, the executive director of the NGO Children’s Human Rights Centre of Albania, CRCA, which combats cyber violence against minors, told BIRN that the first slutshaming case reported to its hotline ‘I Sigurt’ [Safe] happened on YouTube in 2016. But TikTok has since taken over.

“The more popular the platform, the more cases of slutshaming and online sexual violence against children there will be,” said Hazizaj. Frequently, the perpetrator knows the person they are targeting and the motive is to “conquer” them.

TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.

When everyday activities attract abuse

Illustration. The 427 TikTok videos analysed by BIRN fall into four categories:direct targeting of random users or women and girls (318 videos), slutshaming culture (51 videos), videos taken in public places (30 videos), and slutshaming of public figures (18 videos). BIRN via Canva

The content BIRN identified includes photos or videos of women and girls engaged in ordinary, everyday activities, virtually or in real life, including dancing, singing, hanging out, or taking part in social media trends.

In most cases, the targets were also shamed and called derogatory names by other users who left comments.

One of the videos BIRN analysed featured Nora and her friends taking part in a TikTok lip-syncing trend that was re-shared without their consent and with specific insults for each individual. The abusive language carried over into the subsequent comments.

“No matter how many times we report it, the account has not been closed down,” said Nora. “With Instagram it was different because usually we could close the accounts after a number of individuals reported it.”

In neighbouring Albania, a woman who has over 1,000 followers and 75,000 views on TikTok regularly takes aim at female public sector employees, accusing them of using sex to climb the career ladder.

Six of the videos identified by BIRN featured random women dancing in nightclubs.

Fine Line Between Virtuality and Reality

Direct search, in Tik Tok, for the word ‘kurve’, meaning ‘slut’ in most of the languages spoken in the countries of the Balkans. Photo: BIRN/Denis Sllovinja

Experts and victims say slutshaming can seriously harm the mental health of those targeted.

On February 12 this year, police in Albanian said they had arrested a 39-year-old man for “causing the suicide” of a 27-year-old woman.

“This citizen allegedly published an intimate photo (on TikTok) of the 27-year-old woman, who threw herself from a 4th floor terrace allegedly for this reason and died as a result of her injuries,” the police said.

Local media then proceeded to republish the photo, drawing condemnation from women’s rights groups.

Just a month earlier, another woman in Albania, 41-year-old Bedrie Loka, died after drinking a poisonous toxin. Initially, the cause of her suicide was attributed to derogatory content targeting Loka on TikTok via an account that media later reported was set up by her cousin.

Days later, however, Loka’s husband, Xhemal, was arrested on suspicion of “causing suicide”. Local media published videos, made by their children, of Xhemal abusing his wife; reports quoted the children saying their father had frequently threatened her.

The impact of slutshaming or other forms of gender-based violence on mental health is the same whether it happens online or offline, said Bind Skeja, executive director of the Kosovo-based Centre for Information and Social Improvement, which works on mental health issues.

“Individuals who start to think about suicide are usually in a situation where they feel there is no way out,” Skeja said. Invariably, the responsibility to find a way out falls on the victim, when it should be on society and mental health professionals, he told BIRN.

“We should deal with the perpetrators in a proactive manner; mental health work should directly involve removing risk factors”.

One respondent to the BIRN questionnaire, a non-binary person in North Macedonia, said ongoing slutshaming had caused them “depression; anxiety; a vicious cycle of unhealthy romantic relationships; and also trauma”.

“I was exposed on social media with photos which were considered to be ‘provocative’ and many people were sharing them, including online media, as back then I was part of a student movement in my home country.”

Nora, who was first targeted when she was 13, said her family supported her, but other families had taken a different approach.

“Many girls I know, since their families found out about the slutshaming, have been under strong parental control and their mental health deteriorated,” she said.

Legal limitations

A sign is on display at TikTok in Los Angeles, California, USA, February 15, 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/ALLISON DINNER

Neither slutshaming nor cyberbullying is a separate criminal violation in any of the eight countries covered by this article, but they can be tackled under legislation covering other violations.

Often, however, the authorities only act when it is already too late.

On February 19, Albanian Interior Minister Taulant Balla met TikTok’s Director of Public Policy and Government Relations for Central and Eastern Europe, Jakub Olek, to request a contact point for Albanian police and increased monitoring of Albanian-language content.

In the wake of Loka’s suicide, Albanian Justice Minister Ulsi Manja took to Facebook to call on Albanian society to react to cyberbullying, “starting from our children and families, and not wait for the next victim after Bedrie Loka; as a state we should review our laws”.

Laws can be “easily fixed”, Hazizaj said. But in most cases “institutions are not capable of offering protection due to limitations in human capacities, which increases the lack of trust in institutions”.

Nora told BIRN that, in her case, at least six people had tried to report the abusive accounts to the Kosovo police. The response is always the same, she said: “The IP addresses of the accounts’ owners cannot be detected without direct contact with the account.”

Hate speech based on gender or sexual orientation features in the criminal codes of Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo; Albania’s refers only to hate speech based on sexual orientation; in Montenegro, the criminal code mentions hate speech based on gender or sexual orientation only as “aggravating” factors.

In North Macedonia, Nikola Prokopenko, a state counsellor in the justice ministry, said that parliament had amended the Criminal Code in February 2023 to criminalise ‘cyberbullying and gender-based violence’ under ‘Endangering security’, ‘Stalking’, ‘Sexual harassment’, ‘Causing national, racial or religious hate, discord and intolerance’, and ‘Spreading Racist and Xenophobic Material by Means of Computer System’.

Petra Cop, public relations officer at the Slovenian justice ministry, told BIRN that “cyberbullying is determined in the Criminal Code as the criminal offence of stalking”.

Rolanda Stafa, information rights coordinator at Albania’s justice ministry, told BIRN that “the criminal legislation does not expressly provide for cyberbullying as a criminal violation,” adding that it also “does not categorise concrete criminal violations based on gender”. Criminal acts of “Insult”, “Defamation”, “Unfair interference in private life”, and “Stalking” are punishable even in “cases of online postings, comments, or in any other form that may affect the dignity and the morals of a person of any gender,” Stafa said.

Montenegro and Serbia also have criminalised stalking by ‘other means of communication’. Kosovo has a similar explanation under the criminal violation Harassment.

Cop, from the Slovenian ministry, said that “certain aspects of cyberbullying may also be covered by the criminal offence of criminal coercion and criminal offence of threat, depending on the actual situation of specific cases”. Moreover, “in connection with gender based violence, the criminal offence of public incitement to hatred, violence or intolerance… even if it is committed by publication in mass media or on the websites… is relevant,” Cop said in an emailed reply to BIRN.

The Croatian justice ministry told BIRN that cyberbullying falls under several criminal violations defined in the Croatian Criminal Code, including Threat, Intrusive Behaviour, Insult, Defamation, Violation of a Child’s Privacy, Public incitement to Violence and Hatred. The perpetrator faces more severe punishment if the crime is committed through “the press, radio, television, computer system or network, at a public meeting or in another way and becomes accessible to a larger number of people,” the ministry said in an emailed response.

The justice ministries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia did not respond to requests for comment. All four countries have criminalised the ‘Unauthorised Publication and Presentation of another’s Texts, Portraits and Recordings’.

Croatia and Montenegro have criminalised the ‘Unauthorised Use of Personal Data’.

As for Bosnia and Herzegovina, neither state-level law nor law at the level of the country’s two entities recognise cyberbullying as a term, said legal expert Aleksandar Jokic.

“But this can be covered with various crimes prescribed by those [Criminal] Codes,” Jokic told BIRN. “It is matter for the prosecutor whether each act of cyberbullying will be prosecuted or not. Not every act of cyberbullying could be qualified as a crime.” Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity has criminalised the ‘unauthorised publication and display of other people’s writing, portraits and recordings’.

Fisnik Xhelili, from the NGO Mollekuqja in North Macedonia, said state institutions “are not doing enough because in the digital world the regulations are not well defined in our country, and even where there are regulations in place, they are not properly implemented”.

Victims of gender-based violence with whom his NGO is in touch say police told them to “just go home”, Xhelili told BIRN.

“Comments and perpetrator support hurt me most”

Illustration. Slutshaming comments in TikTok. Photo: BIRN

Nora’s plight has also hit her younger sister, who has been bullied at school because of the TikTok content targeting her sibling.

The abusive account is still online, and still receiving words of encouragement from followers.

“What kills me the most is when I see comments that deal with rumours. Instead of reporting the account to close it down, they give it material to continue,” she said.

“The account took a photo of my best friend from her social media and shared it together with the photo of a boy, praising him and calling her very disgusting names. People in the comments love it but she doesn’t even know him”.

Besarta Breznica, gender-based violence programme officer at the NGO Kosovo’s Women Network, said that “women and non-binary persons are often blamed based on the way they dress or behave, which adds to the rape culture and is preceded by a patriarchal mentality”.

Indeed, Hazizaj from Albania told BIRN that in many cases they found out that the slutshamers were a group of boys who would sexually harass the girls in real life.

“It starts with slutshaming to be able to reach them physically, so it is often the step before potential rape,” he said.

According to Breznica, besides the lack of a legal framework, “the victims have difficulty talking about this type of violence in the family and an even harder time reporting it to the authorities”.

The non-binary person who responded to BIRN’s questionnaire said they had not told their parents or legal guardians or any other family members.

“I was afraid they would blame me; they wouldn’t understand,” they said.

According to Skeja, the more the content gathers engagement, the greater the fear felt by the victims that their family might find out, leading to them feeling “pressured and oppressed” over photos they may have felt originally “empowered” by.

In most cases, said Hazizaj, when the abuse is criminal, the victims are too afraid to go to the police.

“My father will kill me,” he quoted many as saying. Without communication within the family, the victim bears the burden of the bullying alone.

“It is not only online shaming, but in the family, in work, and so on,” he said.

Nora said she fears for the future.

“What bothers me more at this point is that it is happening continuously, currently on a larger scale,” she told BIRN. “What will happen when I try to become part of the labour force and they see this content with one simple search online?”

“It is systematic, the same words, the same targeting, the same humiliation over and over again”.