This report examines several cases of Egyptian women who became victims of online violence.  Each woman found her own way to escape the situation, with family support proving to be the main lifeline in overcoming these traumatic experiences.

Tasneem Monir

August 20, 2025

Walaa (not her real name), lives in Cairo with her family. She never expected that turning down a romantic proposal from a colleague she considered a friend would lead to accounts appearing on X with her photo alongside obscene and defamatory descriptions of her, such as “sex worker.”

What happened to Walaa was identity theft, defined by the UN Population Fund as a form of online violence involving “creating a fake profile and assuming someone’s identity for malicious purposes, including destroying someone’s reputation or threatening their safety.” 

Rania

Rania (not her real name), a psychotherapist, was subjected to gender-based violence online which involved hacking her communications and social media accounts, a common method of abuse. The striking thing is that Rania’s former partner was the one who blackmailed her, so as to force her to take him back. Rania thought the matter would end once she became engaged to someone else, but that was only the beginning. He threatened to send recordings of their intimate phone calls to her family and current fiancé in order to destroy her life, if she did not comply with his sexual demands.

Heba

Heba (not her real name), a university professor from Upper Egypt, is dealing with similar fears after being blackmailed by her former partner with intimate conversations and photos. Heba explains that they had been together for years and were planning to marry, but her brother disapproved of him as a husband for her. Heba expected her partner to try to change her brother’s mind. But instead, when she said she wanted to break off their relationship, he threatened to ruin her reputation in front of her family and the students at the university, if she did not stay with him.

Marianne

Threats of character assassination became more complicated in the case of Marianne (not her real name), a journalist specialising in women’s issues whose fiancé tried to sexually assault her. Marianne managed to hit him and push him away, after which he apologised. Such was his insistence, she agreed to give him a second chance, even though she always felt uncomfortable with him and despite his trying to exploit her financially.

He went so far as to use recordings of their conversations to try to ruin her reputation with the priests at her church.  After she refused to pay for the wedding or submit to his sexual demands, which she found unpleasant, he asked her to return the gold he had given her as compensation for having a relationship with a girl “of bad reputation.,”

A study by “Take Back the Tech!” – a global campaign focused on mapping the extent of violence against women – of 1,126 such cases reported between 2012 and 2014, found that women aged 18-30 or less were most at risk of online blackmail. And violence at the hands of an abusive partner was one of the most common kinds of online violence against women.

“Take Back the Tech!” is part of the Women’s Rights Programme (WRP) run by the 

APC, and is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

She Gets The Blame

Walaa was overcome with fear when she found the offensive accounts about her on X, but her feelings of anger and helplessness were compounded by the fact that the perpetrator took pride in defaming her among her university colleagues, and in threatening her using a fake account.

Walaa asked her mother, a lawyer, hypothetically so as not to draw attention to herself, what steps a colleague for example should take if faced with such a problem.. Walaa says she felt frustrated when her mother said she would have to go to the cybercrime unit and open up her accounts for inspection. Being a political activist, Walaa did not go ahead with that, fearing that legal action would only cause her more problems.

A study on digital violence against women in Egypt, published in 2023, showed that most social media platforms do not take reports by victims of online abuse seriously. The study also pointed out that the fear girls have, should their families find out about their relationships outside marriage, can dissuade them from defending themselves, from seeking support, or taking legal action.

• Heba felt this fear even more intensely as a woman from Upper Egypt, the most conservative and religiously strict region of the country when it comes to women’s chastity. This meant she stayed silent in the face of her ex-partner’s abuse, fearing that, if provoked, he would carry out his threats to expose her. What made it even more painful was that, when she threatened to tell his family that he blackmailed women, he replied: “I’m a man, what can they do to me? But you, they’ll cut your throat.” That brought home to Heba the bitterness of injustice and discrimination.
• Marianne had the same feeling of injustice when the priests at her church, who had been charged with separating her from her former fiancé, rebuked her over their conversations. She felt she was being portrayed as someone with a bad reputation, even though she had refused to respond to him and had defended herself. The ruling was in his favour, and she was ordered to return the gold he had given her. What also pained her was being humiliated in front of her father.
• As for Rania, she was terrified that her ex-partner would find out about her fear of her family. As such, she periodically closed her accounts, as she did not dare to openly block him or ignore him.

A 2020 study by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), measuring the prevalence of online violence against women in 51 countries worldwide, showed that women in countries with gender inequality, or with institutionalised gender discrimination, were more likely to experience online violence. It also found that 62 percent of female respondents said women felt powerless because not enough was being done to tackle the problem.

Support: a Light in the Darkness of Helplessness

• Walaa decided to seek advice from friends more experienced in dealing with cyber violence against women. They advised her not to show her attacker she was afraid, rather to pretend she had family and legal support. She decided to put out a tweet on X – the platform where she had been threatened – saying that someone was impersonating her, that she had all the evidence and photos from the accounts that were defaming her, and that she intended to take legal action and expose the “individual” to all their mutual acquaintances.
• Walaa decided to seek advice from friends more experienced in dealing with cyber violence against women. They advised her not to show her attacker she was afraid, rather to pretend she had family and legal support. She decided to put out a tweet on X – the platform where she had been threatened – saying that someone was impersonating her, that she had all the evidence and photos from the accounts that were defaming her, and that she intended to take legal action and expose the “individual” to all their mutual acquaintances.
• Similarly, Rania received support from her fiancé, now her husband, when she confided in him about her fear of the online threats. With his support and reassurance, she blocked the blackmailer on social media and showed no fear.

Multiple Methods of Confronting Online Violence

• Walaa felt empowered when the blackmailer backed down and deleted all the defamatory accounts. He contacted her, explaining nervously that he had no intention of hurting her, and closed or deleted his accounts. This experience made Walaa feel more confident, because she had managed to defend herself with the limited means available to her.
• Heba, on the other hand, decided to direct her anger toward  the blackmailer when he apologized and asked her to take him back and trust him again. He said he had acted out of love for her and jealousy and had never meant to hurt her. Even though he assured her he felt guilty and asked her to forgive him, he still went back to asking for sexual favours and a secret marriage. This only made her more certain she was right to break up with him. Heba adopted new ways to protect herself in romantic relationships, despite all the pain and tears whenever she remembers what she went through. “The wound is still raw,” she says. But she is determined to move on and to support other women and girls who have fallen into similar traps.

According to the infographics published by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2020, women are at grave risk of online violence across 51 countries, with rates peaking at 98 percent in the Middle East, while the lowest rates were in Europe, at 74 per cent. Global rates for impersonation and identity theft reached 63 percent; threats of violence 52 percent; hacking and stalking 63 percent; disinformation and defamation 67 percent; and blackmail using private photos and videos 57 percent.

• Rania went on to marry her fiancé and have a child. She has learned more about what personal and digital security means, changing all her accounts and her phone number. While she was being blackmailed, she cut back her digital presence and has felt safer over time.
• Marianne says that an early financial setback saved her from a painful marriage, in which she would have been trapped in, because of the difficulty of divorcing as a Christian. Though she is grateful to her family, Marian feels anger towards the social and religious system that, she says, has wronged her.