Slane Castle in Ireland, site of the concert in question. Via Wiki Commons.
What do you do when hundreds, if not thousands, of people are sharing what technically amounts to child porn on social media? We’re about to find out in Ireland.
During Saturday’s Eminem concert in Slane Castle, a teen girl was photographed giving a man oral sex, as well as the man fingering her while she sucked his face. By Sunday afternoon, whoever the creep was that took the photos uploaded them onto the internet, and they went viral. The hashtag #slanegirl trended on Twitter, and the three different photos circulated for more than 24 hours, even trending globally for a brief period early Monday morning. Some tweets of the image got more than 200 retweets.
Over on Facebook, people are complaining about seeing the image repeatedly in their timeline, while a “Slane Girl” Facebook page received 8,000 likes before being removed early Monday.
As double standards would have it, the guys featured in the incriminating photos are being called “hero” and “legend” while the girl is currently being slut-shamed, mocked and occasionally pitied. No one has bothered to identify the males, but the girl’s identity has been discovered (on her Instagram she lists her age as 16) and circulated.
Irish authorities have confirmed that the girl in question is underage, and have launched an investigation. While the authorities have not yet contacted the man or the photographer, they presumably will, as everything depicted in the photographs could be considered child pornography. Sharing pornographic images of anyone under 18 (or 17 in Ireland) is illegal, and even if the others involved are also underage, they could still be charged with the distribution of child porn.