Pressured or forced into making sexual content? Your legal rights

By Yair Cohen, Solicitor specialising in internet law. Updated 5 October 2026.

This guide is part of our porn lawyers section.

If you were pressured, tricked or forced into making sexual videos or photos, this article is for you. Perhaps you live with the fear that someone you know will find it, or feel ashamed of something that was done to you. That shame belongs to the people who pressured you, not to you. It may have been someone you trusted who pushed you into it, or you agreed to one thing and something very different happened once the camera was on. You may believe that because you signed a form, or went along with it at the time, nothing can be done. Please do not give up. In our experience a closer look at how the content came to be made usually shows a way forward. A letter from us is usually enough to get the content removed, and quickly; court is the fallback. Getting it down can be the moment you finally start to feel safe again.

What counts as being pressured or forced into sexual content

You were coerced if someone took away your real choice, whether by threats, pressure, tricks or by making you depend on them. Section 74 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 says consent means agreeing by choice, and only counts where you were free and able to make that choice. Agreement given under threat, or while you were too drunk or drugged to decide, may not be agreement at all. Whether it was depends on the facts, which is why we start by listening to what actually happened. We will not judge you for anything you tell us.

Coercion does not always look like force. It can be someone telling you that you owe them for looking after you, or that you signed a form so you have no choice. It can be a debt you are told to work off, or being kept hungry or tired until you give in. It can be threats to make you homeless, to report you to the police, to tell your family about your private life or to put your details online. And it can be someone saying they love you, and that this is what people in love do.

Agreeing to a shoot is not agreeing to everything that happens once the camera is on. Some of the people who contact us went along to make one kind of film and were pushed into something they had never agreed to. Some were handed a form to sign afterwards, or minutes before filming, with no time to read it. None of that means you gave up your rights, and none of it makes you to blame for what others chose to do.

Why it can be hard to see at the time

Coercion can come dressed up as care, which is why many people only recognise it years later. The person may have taken you in when you had nowhere else to go, given you drink or drugs until you relied on them, or slowly cut you off from friends and family. By the time the filming started, saying no may not have felt possible. Looking back, you may ask yourself why you did not walk away, but that question is unfair to you.

If that sounds familiar, it is not your fault. You were the one who was wronged. People keep quiet for all sorts of reasons. They feel ashamed, or they are afraid their family will find out. They were told the police would not care because they agreed to it. They have no money for a lawyer, or someone is holding their passport. Every one of those reasons is understandable, and none of them stops you getting help now, even years later.

Where the person who pressured you was a partner, an ex-partner or a relative, their behaviour may also be the separate crime of controlling or coercive behaviour under section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. That offence only covers people who are personally connected to you, so it will not fit every producer or agent. The other routes in this article do not depend on any relationship.

If you are not safe right now

If you are in danger right now, call the police on 999. You do not have to explain everything on that call; the priority is getting you safe. Your safety matters more than anything else, including the videos.

Specialist charities can help you plan a way out, find somewhere safe to stay and talk things through. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline supports women, and the Men's Advice Line supports men. Rape Crisis supports anyone who has been through sexual violence, and Victim Support helps victims of any crime, whether or not they have gone to the police.

If someone is holding your passport, controlling where you live or threatening to have you deported, that can amount to forced labour, which is a crime under section 1 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The same section says it makes no difference that you agreed to some of what happened. The Modern Slavery Helpline can talk you through the support available, including the National Referral Mechanism, the official route for getting people in this position recognised and supported.

When you are ready to talk to us, you can email us discreetly and tell us when it is safe to call you back. We will only contact you at the time you choose.

What to keep as evidence, quietly

Keep whatever you safely can, but never put yourself at risk to collect it. Going back over it can bring painful memories to the surface, so take it one step at a time. Useful things include messages and emails, any form you were given, records of payments, the names of the people and companies involved, and the web addresses where the content appears, with screenshots that show the date. If you were hurt, photos of injuries and any notes from a doctor or support service can matter too, as can a diary written at the time and the names of anyone who saw what was going on.

If someone checks your phone, keep copies somewhere they cannot reach, such as an email account only you know about, or with a person you trust. It is also worth keeping a record before anything is taken down, because removal can wipe out the evidence of where the content was.

Do not worry if you have very little. Some people come to us with nothing more than a memory and a single link, and we build from there. You do not need to have everything in order before you contact us.

Going to the police, and what if they say it is a private matter

You can report what happened to the police, and signing a release form does not turn it into a private matter. Some people are told that because they signed something, the police cannot get involved. That is wrong. A form cannot make lawful something that was done without real consent, and being made to take part in sexual acts you did not agree to can be rape or sexual assault under Part 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

Threats are crimes too. Threatening to share sexual images of you, for example to keep you filming, is an offence under section 66B of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Where staying quiet comes at a price, whether money, more filming or anything else, our guide to sexual blackmail and sextortion explains what to do.

In our experience many people hold back from going to the police. Some feel they were at least partly to blame for what happened. Others doubt the police will see it through, and they know these cases can be hard to prove when consent and free will were blurred at the time. Those worries are understandable, and they are not a reason to do nothing.

Going to the police does not stop us acting, nor the other way round. If you decide to report it, we can help you do it sensitively, and the civil steps below do not wait for a police investigation. Even if the police decide not to act, a crime reference number and a record of your complaint can help later.

How we get the videos and your details taken down

The first step is a letter from us, and in our experience that is usually enough. Who it goes to depends on who holds the rights to the videos. Often that is the person who pressured you in the first place, but they may have sold the rights on, or licensed others, such as adult websites, to use the films. Whichever it is, we find out and deal with the right person or company on your behalf. At the same time we send removal requests to the hosts of every platform where the content appears.

For each site we use whichever legal grounds are strongest, from your privacy rights to copyright and the platforms' own legal duties. You do not need to know the details; that is our job. A release form you signed may be open to challenge (our guide on whether a release form you signed is valid explains when), and where the rights can be bought back, you gain control of every copy. We also have Google delist the pages, so that searching your name no longer leads to them. That is often when people can stop checking the internet for themselves and begin to feel safe again.

A producer or site based in North America can be reached through our American partners; see our porn lawyers page.

Holding the people responsible to account

In most cases people simply want the whole thing to go away: the content gone, and the person who pressured them out of their life. Some also want compensation or an apology. We start by taking a full account from you, at your pace. You can stop and take a break whenever you need to. We then write to whoever is responsible, explaining their wrongdoing in legal terms and giving them a chance to put it right.

Once we take your case on, you no longer have to deal with the person who controlled you. We tell them to deal with us, not you, and we handle every reply, excuse or threat. If they keep contacting or pressuring you, that can be harassment, and we can go to court to put an end to it. You are not on your own any more. We have your back.

In our experience most would rather settle than face a claim. They take the content down, destroy their copies, pay compensation and your legal costs, and sign an undertaking not to publish it again. That signed promise can bring real peace of mind. Where we can, we also get the copyright transferred to you, which gives you the legal power to take down any copy that appears in future.

If they refuse to put things right, we can take it to the civil court, where you only need to show that your case is more likely than not to be right. The court can award you damages and order them to stop. Where someone is threatening to publish, it can act fast through an emergency injunction and keep your name private.

Civil claims have time limits, six years for many of them under section 2 of the Limitation Act 1980, so it is worth getting advice sooner rather than later. But if the content is still online, the harm is happening now, and we look at what can be done about it today.

Signing a form does not mean you agreed to what happened, and it does not mean nothing can be done.

People we have helped

We have changed names and some details in these stories to protect our clients' privacy.

A man who had lost his job and was living on the streets was approached by a stranger who offered him cash to appear in a video. What happened during the filming went far beyond anything he had imagined. Afterwards he was asked to sign a contract and handed £180. He begged the man not to publish the video and offered to pay the money back, but he was laughed at, and the video stayed online for nearly three years. By the time he called us he felt he had nowhere left to turn. The man behind the website had taken great care to hide who he was, but after about two weeks of investigation we traced him, and he turned out to be a school headteacher. He agreed at once to take down all of our client's videos and to pay him compensation. After we briefed journalists and they contacted him, he took his whole website offline, and videos of hundreds of other men came down with it. The video he had begged the man not to publish, nearly three years earlier, was finally gone. The full account is in our case study on how we exposed a headteacher who exploited homeless men.

Katarina, as we call her in our removal of old online adult content case study, was drawn in by a boyfriend as a young woman. Years later, challenging each studio's release forms one by one gave her control of most of her films.

A woman in her early forties came to us about films she had made in her early twenties. She had been given alcohol and drugs at the time, nobody explained the contracts, and she was told the films would only be sold behind a paywall or on DVD. Instead they were free to watch all over the internet, for anyone to find. Now a mother with a partner and a career, she feared her child would be bullied and her employer would find out. We negotiated with the production companies, which agreed to transfer the copyright to her and help take the videos down. With the rights in her name, she can now have any new copies removed. Instead of living in fear of what her child or her employer might come across, she now has the means to deal with it.

Frequently asked questions

Is it a crime to force or pressure someone into making a sexual video?

In many cases, yes. Sexual acts without real consent are serious crimes, so is threatening to share intimate images, and controlling someone through their passport or immigration status can amount to forced labour under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

I signed a release form. Does that mean nothing can be done?

No. A form signed without a real chance to understand it or refuse it can be challenged, and your privacy and data protection rights apply either way.

How do I know if what happened to me was coercion?

Ask yourself whether you were truly free to say no. If the answer is no, or you are not sure, talk to us. Working that out with you is part of what we do.

What evidence should I keep?

Anything that shows who was involved, what you were told and where the content appears now. Collect only what you safely can, and come to us even if you have almost nothing.

Must I report it to the police before you can help?

No. You can do both at once, or only one. Getting the content down does not depend on a police investigation.

Will anyone have to know my name?

We keep your name out of our correspondence wherever we can. If it ever came to court, anonymity can be requested for you.