Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni has voiced outrage over a porn site that allegedly featured doctored images of herself and other high-profile women, alongside sexist and offensive captions and commentary.

The forum, known as Phica – a name based on a slang term “figa” for the word “vagina” in Italian – was shut down by its own managers on Thursday, following a widespread backlash. The site, which had hundreds of thousands of subscribers at the time of its closure, blamed users for breaking its rules.

Subscribers of the adult forum allegedly harvested images of women from social media websites or public sources, before doctoring them and posting them along with misogynistic descriptions.

As well as Georgia Meloni, the site also allegedly featured images of her sister Arianna, who is a prominent politician within the Brothers of Italy party as well as other Italian celebrities and politicians.

“I am disgusted by what happened, and I want to extend my solidarity and support to all the women who have been offended, insulted, and violated in their intimacy by the managers of this forum and its users,” Meloni told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper.

She added, “It is disheartening to note that in 2025, there are still those who consider it normal and legitimate to trample on a woman’s dignity and target her with sexist and vulgar insults, hiding behind anonymity or a keyboard.”

In an apparent nod to Italy’s current laws on revenge porn, Meloni said it has become apparent that “this no longer happens just out of ‘revenge,’ and that protecting our data and our privacy is increasingly crucial in our times.”

Italy does have a “revenge porn” law in place, passed in 2019, that makes the “illegal dissemination of sexually explicit images” punishable by up to six years in prison.

Her sister Arianna, also speaking to Corriere della Sera, blamed what she described as a “bad habit of a click-through society, where we intrude on private life, we offend, we peek through keyholes, we ruin lives, and we belittle the real, important things that women achieve and conquer with their work day after day.”

Prime Minister Meloni, who separated from her long-term partner in 2023 after he was caught making sexist remarks, has previously been vocal on women’s issues including deepfake pornography and domestic violence.

In 2024, she sued a father and son accused of creating a deepfake video of her. Seeking $108,200 (€100,000) in damages in a civil trial, she has pledged to donate any financial winnings to a state fund assisting women who are victims of violence. Both men have pleaded not guilty. The next hearing is scheduled for September.

At the time, Meloni’s lawyer, Maria Giulia Marongiu, told Italian press outlets that the prime minister was hoping to set an example for other victims of revenge porn and deepfake porn to speak out against those who defame them.

Deepfakes are digitally created and altered content that can bear the exact likeness of a real person. Meanwhile doctored images may include some original elements but have been edited to distort reality.

The Phica scandal has reignited the feminist debate in Italy and comes a week after an Italian Facebook page where thousands of men posted intimate images of their female partners, sisters and unknown women – many of them without their consent – was closed down following public outrage and multiple complaints to police.(CNN)