The ‘sadistic’ form of coercive abuse becoming increasingly common
A man in NSW has pleaded guilty to coercive abuse involving the theft and weaponisation of a woman's intimate images, using them to force her into continued contact. The case highlights the growing prevalence of image-based abuse, often facilitated by digital access and manipulation. Experts warn of the sadistic nature of such abuse, which inflicts psychological harm and control through humiliation.
- ▪Malachi Turnbull stole intimate photos from Ashley's phone after helping her set up a new device, then used them to coerce her into maintaining contact.
- ▪Turnbull shared a blurred image of Ashley's naked torso on his Instagram profile and listed her phone number, leading to public exposure.
- ▪He sent Ashley a screen recording of her 'My eyes only' Snapchat folder, which contained graphic videos of her and her ex-partner.
- ▪Turnbull sent up to 100 texts a day, used offensive language, and threatened to share more content if she did not respond.
- ▪The case has raised concerns about the increasing complexity and emotional toll of image-based abuse, also known as 'revenge porn'.
Sydney Morning Herald publishes from Australia and files mainly under world. We currently carry 3,705 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | The Sydney Morning Herald |
| Canonical URL | https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-sadistic-form-of-coercive-abuse-becoming-increasingly-common-20260416-p5zodx.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed |
| Publication time | Wed, 29 Apr 2026 05:00:00 +1000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-04-28T19:06:06.633Z |
| Last seen | 2026-04-28T19:06:06.633Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 90tXOPfKLsDM |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","dateModified":"2026-04-28T19:00:00Z","datePublished":"2026-04-28T19:00:00Z","description":"In one case, a man stole a female acquaintance’s intimate photos and weaponised the material to force her into maintaining contact.","headline":"The ‘sadistic’ form of coercive abuse becoming increasingly common","keywords":"Courts, For subscribers, Crime, Crime, Courts, Just in SMH","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Clare Sibthorpe","jobTitle":"Crime…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Sydney Morning Herald.