Arrested over sexual images or messages online? We protect you and your name

By Yair Cohen, Solicitor specialising in internet law. Updated 17 October 2026.

This guide is part of our pornography and adult content law section.

If the police have contacted you about sexual images, videos or messages online, whether they have arrested you, turned up at your door or asked you to come in for a chat, this article is for you. The best time to call us is now, before you have said anything to anyone: 0800 612 7211. We take it from there. Most people we help with this have never been in trouble in their lives. The knock comes out of nowhere, the phone goes into an evidence bag, and within hours the thing you are most afraid of is not the interview but the fallout: who saw the police car, what your ex is going to post, whether your employer will hear. Any criminal firm can sit next to you at the police station. What we do, and what this article is about, is protect you and your name at the same time, from the first phone call until long after the police have closed the file.

Call us the moment the police first contact you

The moment an officer phones you, hands you a letter or stands on your doorstep, you call us, and we deal with the police from then on. You have the right to speak to a solicitor in private at any time, under section 58 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and you can ask for us by name rather than taking whoever is on duty that night. The police will wait for us. In our experience the first conversation, sometimes an informal one on the doorstep or over the phone, is where people do themselves the most harm, because they try to explain. Say that your solicitor will be in touch, and leave the explaining to us.

What we do from that first call: we speak to the officer, find out what the allegation is and what evidence the police say they have, decide with you how the interview is to be handled, and sit with you through it. We then stay on the case while the police investigate, dealing with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service for you, so that you are not fielding calls and emails about it on your own.

What you are likely to have been arrested for

Most arrests over online sexual content come down to a handful of offences, and the police do not always say clearly which one is in play. The most common is sharing, or threatening to share, a private sexual photo or video of a person who did not agree to it, a crime since January 2024 under section 66B of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. That covers a photo forwarded after a break-up, a video posted to get back at someone, and a threat sent in the middle of an argument, even if nothing was sent on. Others we see are sending someone an unwanted picture of genitals, creating or asking for a fake sexual image of a real person, secretly filming or watching someone in private, demanding money or sex under threat of exposure, and harassment or stalking where the messages were sexual.

Sexting between adults who both want it is not, in itself, a crime, whatever anyone has told you. It becomes one when the person in the image did not agree to it being sent on, when the person receiving it did not want it, when anyone in it is under 18, or when what was sent is so extreme that the law treats even a private message as a publication. In a great many of these cases the whole thing turns on consent, on who actually sent what, and on what the messages around the image say. That evidence sits on phones, in accounts and on platforms, and it is easy to misread. Reading it properly is what we do every day, on both sides of these complaints.

Who the allegation usually comes from

In our experience the complaint is made by someone you know: an ex-partner, a former friend, someone from a dating app, a colleague, a person you have fallen out with. Sometimes it is true in part and badly exaggerated. Sometimes it is made up, or made to gain the upper hand in a separation, a dispute over the children or a business falling-out. Sometimes you did something in a moment of anger or drink that you regret, and you need someone to help you deal with it in the least damaging way. Each of those needs a different approach at the police station, and the approach is best decided before the interview, not during it.

We also act for people who had no idea anything was wrong until the police arrived: an account was hacked, a shared device was used by someone else, a picture went from their number while someone else had their phone. The internet leaves a trail, and in many of these cases the trail points away from the person who was arrested, once someone who knows how to read it looks properly.

How we take the worry off you after the interview

For most people the interview ends with release, not charge. You are either released under investigation, with no conditions and no time limit, or released on bail, which usually lasts an initial three months and may carry conditions such as not contacting the complainant. Either way you go home with a question mark over you and no date by which it will be answered, and the waiting is the part people tell us they found hardest. So we do not leave you to wait.

While your phone sits in a queue at a digital forensics unit, we are already working. Our in-house open-source intelligence team, which has spent more than ten years finding what people leave behind online, gathers the full message threads, the account history, the dates, the platform's own records and anything the complainant has said elsewhere. We put that to the police in writing, with the legal argument, rather than waiting to see what they turn up. In many cases that is what ends the investigation with no further action, and it is why the right lawyer in this period changes the outcome rather than simply keeping you company through it. You will have one person to call, who knows your case, and who will tell you plainly where things stand each time you ask.

The investigation is one problem. What people are saying about you while it goes on is the other, and we deal with both.

Your reputation while the investigation is going on

This is where most criminal firms stop and where we start. An arrest is not a conviction, and you are entitled to be treated as innocent, but that is not how it feels when the neighbours saw the police car, when your ex has written on Facebook that you were arrested for sex offences, when it is going round the WhatsApp group at the school gate, or when a colleague has heard something and is not quite meeting your eye. People tell us the gossip is worse than the case. It spreads faster than the truth, it reaches your employer before you have been charged with anything, and it stays online after the police have let you go.

We stop it. Until you are charged, the fact that you are being investigated is private information, and a post that says you were arrested for a sexual offence can be defamatory as well. A letter from us usually brings a post down within days, and the person who wrote it tends to go quiet once they understand what they have exposed themselves to. We deal with the ex who is posting, the acquaintance who is "just asking questions" in a local group, the anonymous account, and the local news site that is sniffing around, and we do it quietly, so that defending the allegation and protecting your name go together rather than one undoing the other. Where the person posting is also the complainant, that matters to the criminal case too, and we make sure the police know.

If the police publish something they should not

Sometimes the damage is done by the police themselves: a press release, a social media post, a name given to a journalist, a mugshot that should never have left the station. The police have the same duty of privacy to a suspect as anyone else, and when they publish what they should not have, we act. We ask for it to be taken down, we go after the copies that have spread from it, and where the publication has done real damage to you we claim compensation from the force. You do not need to have been famous, or to have had any public profile at all, for that to apply. The question is only whether what they published was lawful, and in our experience it sometimes is not.

After you are cleared: clearing Google too

No further action, a dropped charge or an acquittal ends the case. It does not end the search results. People tell us that months after the police closed the file, the first thing anyone found when they typed in their name was a forum thread, a news story about the arrest, or a screenshot of the original Facebook post. For some it cost them a job offer. For others it was a new relationship, or simply the dread of being looked up. We clear that too. Posts and articles that were unlawful when they were written come down whether they went up before you were cleared or after. Reports that were lawful at the time but are now out of date and unfair can be removed from Google and the other search engines under your right to be forgotten, and we handle the whole of that process, including the appeals when a search engine says no the first time. It does not matter who you were before this started, well known or entirely private. The aim is that a search of your name, a year from now, shows the life you are living and not the worst week of it.

Why come to internet lawyers for a criminal case

Yair Cohen

Paul Greenberg

Both qualified police station representatives, with over fifty years of criminal defence between them, and both specialist internet law solicitors.

Because the evidence is online, and so is the damage. The two solicitors who lead this work, Yair Cohen and Paul Greenberg, began in criminal defence and have about fifty years of it between them, including some of the hardest cases. Both are accredited to represent people at the police station. We now take criminal work only where it meets the internet: allegations that come out of online content, and cases that could do lasting harm to someone's name. That focus means the person sitting next to you in the interview understands how a platform stores data, what a timestamp proves and what it does not, how an account can be spoofed and why a screenshot is not always what it seems. And because we act every week for people whose reputations are attacked online, we are the same firm that deals with the gossip, the posts and the search results, rather than a criminal firm that tells you to find someone else for that part.

What it costs, and why not the duty solicitor

You can ask for a duty solicitor at the police station free of charge, under legal aid. They will usually be a capable all-round criminal lawyer, and they will not usually be a specialist in online sexual content, in the evidence that decides these cases, or in what is being said about you while the case goes on. We charge for our attendance. For that, we take the matter over entirely: the police station with you, every communication with the police and the CPS as required, the investigation on your side, and your reputation. In most cases we act on a fixed fee, so you know what it costs before we start. If the police have been in touch, call 0800 612 7211 now and we will take it from there.

Frequently asked questions

The police have asked me to come in for a voluntary interview. Do I need a solicitor?

Yes. A voluntary interview is still an interview under caution and what you say in it counts. Call us before you agree a date, and we will attend with you.

Do I have to use the duty solicitor?

No. You can ask for a solicitor by name at any time, and the police will contact them for you. The duty solicitor is free under legal aid; we charge, and in most cases on a fixed fee.

Should I answer the police's questions or stay silent?

It depends on what the police disclose before the interview, what is on your devices and who made the complaint. Silence can count against you later if you rely on something you could have said at the time, so it is a decision we take with you, not one to make alone.

Is sexting a crime in the UK?

Not where two adults each want to send and receive it. The line is crossed if a private image is passed on, or a threat is made to pass it on, without the agreement of the person shown, if an explicit picture lands on someone who never asked for it, or if a person in it is under 18.

Someone has posted on Facebook that I was arrested. Can you get it removed?

In most cases, yes, and quickly. Before charge, an investigation is your private business, and a post accusing you of a sexual offence may well be defamatory on top. One letter from us is usually enough, and we handle this alongside the criminal case.

I was cleared, but the arrest still comes up when people Google me. Can that be removed?

In most cases, yes. Unlawful posts come down whenever they went up, and out-of-date reports can be delisted from search results through a right to be forgotten request. We handle the requests and the appeals.