A woman who was a victim of upskirting said a change in the law is needed to stop sexual harassment being treated as a "public nuisance".

The woman, in her mid-20s and from London, became a victim when she saw two men take and then share indecent images of her on their phones.

She said she obtained evidence of the suspects' behaviour and presented it to the police, but officers were unable to take the matter further.

The victim said a change in the law would have seen her case result in a successful conviction.

She said: "Right now there's not even recognition that it [upskirting] is a crime with a victim at all - it categorises sexual harassment as a public nuisance because the only way you can really prosecute is outraging public decency in the same way you would be for urinating in public.

"The law hasn't caught up with digital technology at all, digital technology changes so quickly and unless we have something to start with that we can start prosecuting under, we are going to be so far behind.

"At the moment upskirting is in limbo - it's a difficult issue to tackle in terms of legislation. We have this culture - unless you were physically touched, you were not assaulted."

Recalling her own experience, the victim said she felt "totally out of control".

"So often women don't know it's happened to them," she said. "It's not always about sexual gratification - in some cases it's harassment, and in my case it was revenge because they were trying to hit on me and I said no.

"For me, I was in a head space of having fun then it suddenly switched. I was involved in something horrible and it was extremely embarrassing."

She said she was confident of upskirting becoming enshrined in law in its own right - in a similar way to revenge porn - despite some "archaic and outdated" views of some "laddy" men and some older women.

She said: "Most people see this as sexual harassment but there are still people who think it's just a prank.

"And that's part of the problem - it's damaging to women to be told 'you're going to get sexually harassed, just get on with it'.

"It's also damaging to men, because it's saying 'men are just like that and they treat women like rubbish' - and that's not true.

"There seems this tension in some older women I've spoke to who think that they had to deal with it their whole lives, so we have to just get on with it too. And there are a lot of laddy guys who think it too.

"This (new law) is a no-brainer and I think everyone agrees with that, it's just going to be a case of how long it takes for everyone to agree."