00:00Giselle Pellicot, Jeffrey Epstein, the Me Too movement, and Colleen Fernandez.
00:06Connecting them all the topic of violence against women.
00:09It often begins in private and can be deadly.
00:13Very few women go public with their stories or even press charges.
00:18And if they do, as a current case in Germany shows, they have to fear for their lives.
00:25I'm standing here in a bulletproof vest, with police and security around me, because I've received death threats.
00:34In March, German actor and presenter Fernandez accused her actor ex-husband of digital abuse against her.
00:41Speaking through his lawyers, Christian Ullmann has denied the allegations.
00:46But the case has triggered nationwide debate that many feel is long overdue.
00:50After the story broke, tens of thousands took to the streets.
00:55We are angry.
00:56It's not right. It must stop. Something has to change.
01:00I want better protection. We need real laws.
01:05Every third woman falls victim to domestic violence.
01:10And these three women are fighting back.
01:14I hope we can build on the momentum that's been generated to change public discourse and policy.
01:25All femicides and all attacks on women have one thing in common.
01:30The male claim to power and control.
01:33It was incredibly upsetting to find out about those pictures.
01:39Theresea Krona fell victim to deepfakes.
01:41In December 2023, she received numerous messages referring to alleged chats.
01:48Someone sent me a link to a public account on a major social media platform.
01:55There were dozens of fake nude photos of me and lots of posts about sexual fantasies.
02:01I felt like I needed to talk about it, but nobody else was talking about these things.
02:07I felt completely alone.
02:11The Fernandez case gave her the courage to go public.
02:14A few weeks later, the offender was identified, but such success is rare.
02:19A recent federal study on domestic violence shows that only about 2% of cases are reported
02:24and that 1 in 5 women has experienced digital violence in the past five years, a number that's rising.
02:30Politicians have long been debating changes to the law.
02:35I feel like we're just starting to really talk about digital and sexualized violence
02:39and about technology like AI,
02:43which is being used on a massive scale to force women out of public discourse.
02:52Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig plans to ban non-consensual sexual images, including deepfakes.
02:59She also wants to criminalize digital assault,
03:02introduce the only yes means yes principle
03:04and mandate anti-violence training for abusers.
03:08Kristina Wolf documents femicides in Germany and feels these measures are not enough.
03:15It's not enough for a woman to say she's been beaten.
03:19She still has to keep pushing to make herself heard.
03:23And in my view, that's intolerable.
03:29Balin Le is also working to ensure that victims' voices are better heard.
03:34She's helped to develop an app that uses AI to assess whether a woman is at risk in a relationship.
03:39Germany has virtually no standards in place for this.
03:44When I travel to different states and towns, looking at various projects,
03:49it seems like it's the Wild West out there.
03:54I find that really bizarre,
03:56because Germany is so regulated about everything else.
04:01Even staircases are standardized.
04:05And that's really scary, because lives are at stake here.
04:10The developers claim the app, called Lizzy, can predict a violent crime with 80% accuracy.
04:18These three women, who experienced the system's failings long before the Fernandes case,
04:22are now hoping for serious changes.
04:28The debate is very good, but it's also long overdue.
04:33It makes me wonder why it has to happen to a celebrity before anything is done.
04:42We have to keep an eye on the platforms.
04:45Every marketplace has rules.
04:47Even a supermarket has to get rid of spoiled goods, regardless of who produced them.
04:55Men need to talk with each other and think critically about times they may have laughed at inappropriate jokes and
05:01not said anything.
05:02And I think they should also listen to women.
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