Azza Ali didn’t imagine that her decision of divorce would cost her both safety and her daughter.

Azza, aged 45, has been blackmailed by her former husband who they have a one daughter by her current husband. He didn’t want to divorce her. “He threatened to publish online intimate pictures of us online. I thought it was just a threat to retract the idea of ​​divorce”.

But what happened was the opposite. After a few days, the notifications Azza's family and her neighbor’s phones did not stop. “I felt like I wanted to disappear at that moment, she says.

 Azza lives in the center of Cairo, in a conservative area, and says that "the presence of pictures like these, even if they are with my husband, would represent a scandal."

When the pictures spread, she lost her job and some of her brothers broke any contact with her, "they told me we can’t deal with you after that. It really broke my heart.”

After some weeks her unhappy life reached a turning point. When she wathed how this matter affected her daughters, she felt that she had to stop what was going on, and if I could not, I wanted to teach them that what happened should never go unpunished.”

Azza became stronger because of her daughters. About two months later, she filed a report of blackmail and was now able to give her daughters a hug again. Her husband is currently in the jail and whereas in the beginning Azza was reluctant to leave her house for fear of people's looks, now she feels that “the power is in my hand and that the criminal is not me.”

Yasmin's experience was not an easy one. In Al Sharqiya, a governorate 120 km from Cairo, she lives with her two children. Some day she woke up to find the police in her home.

She found out that her ex-husband had set up a Facebook page, on which he posted intimate pictures of Yasmine, "and he manipulated pictures of our children in indecent situations and wrote that I offer them for sexual acts,” Yasmine says. Also, he made a police report against her with these accusations.

While the investigations took place her children were taken away from her, and she was imprisoned while the police were trying to verify the photos. The matter developed the following days, because the photos of her were real, so they thought that the photos of the children were real, too.”

Yasmine had no choice but to request a forensic examination of her children.

"It was the most difficult choice to expose my children to such an experience, but I was unable to prove otherwise that I was innocent,” says Yasmine.

After 45 days she was released due to forensic examination results which confirmed that her children were not subjected to sexual assault.

Yasmine is trying to forget this experience, but the nightmare of those dark nights are still haunting her,
“I feel guilty that I had to expose my children to these examinations in order to prove my innocence”.

These were 16 year-old Haidy shehata’s last words after she took a poisonous pill to end her life.

In a remote village in the Sharkia Governorate, Haidy was living a quiet life, until she was subjected to blackmail with pictures of her, some of which were manipulated.

Her life turned upside down because of these pictures, and according to her sister, Nermin, she was afraid of the reactions of her family and friends, despite the support from her mother and her sister.

In February of this year, the perpetrators were sentenced to 10 years in prison for the first and second charges, and 6 years in prison for the third to fifth charges.

The verdict pleased Nermin a little. "I intended to keep fighting for mysister's right." At the age of 18 she decided to join an initiative that supports girls who are subjected to blackmail, "I do not want anyone to have an experience like my sister.”, Nermin says.

Nermin hopes that her sister is now in a better world. She remembers her in every detail of their home. She hung her pictures in all corners of their home to always be surrounded by Haidy smile. She yearns for her a lot, and despite the satisfactory ruling for her and her family, she also knows that her future will be changed.
"When the perpetrators have done their time in jail, they will return to their normal lives, but me and my family have lost part of our soul forever”.

Zena does not remember many details from that day. She spent a nice evening with her friends, and had a light conversation with a man who “offered me to go home with him, and I told him this crossed the red line for me.” She thought the situation ended there since it was the first time she met him, “but I didn't know that six months of my life would turn into a nightmare because of that person.”

Zena, 34 years old, works as a fitness trainer, and the next day she received messages from the man, who threatened to destroy her career. “He told my manager that I don’t have Egyptian legal work papers.”

The panic ruled over Zena's life. In 2012, she left Syria and came to Egypt with valid identification papers, but the work permit required complicated procedures, "and sometimes they are not issued,” she explains.

On a daily basis Zena received different types of blackmail, even to her flat mate.
"It was a daily nightmare. He reached my best friend and threatened to send her pictures with her boyfriend to her family. Here I felt even more afraid.”
Not until she sent information about his threats to his business partners did he stop.

During these six months Zena felt swallowed up by a cycle of fear, and recalling what happened still makes her anxious "that he might come back and that I will be sent back to Syria again.”