Earlier this month, reality-TV personality Stephen Bear was jailed for 21 months after sharing a sex tape online of him with ex Love Island star Georgia Harrison. And shocking figures show that incidences of ‘revenge porn’ have risen by 40 per cent in recent years. Here, two women tell Closer how they coped with the trauma…
CLOSER NEWS REPORT
Jane Smith* remembers the day her life changed forever like it was yesterday. After splitting from her controlling ex-boyfriend of three years, he then sent a video of the pair of them having sex – which Jane didn’t even know had been filmed – to her colleagues, parents, friends and even her bosses.
Jane, 31, recalls, “I could tell who’d got them from the way they looked at me. Everyone was supportive but it was still horrendous. I was ashamed and embarrassed and I blamed myself. It was a nightmare.”
The horror of revenge porn was starkly spelt out by reality star Georgia Harrison, when she bravely detailed her appalling ordeal after disgraced former Celebrity Big Brother winner Stephen Bear, 33, leaked an intimate video of them online in 2020. After he was convicted and sentenced to 21 months in prison, Georgia, 28 – who waived her right to anonymity – said, “I hope me taking a stand gives other women who have fallen victim to revenge porn the courage to seek justice, and most importantly to show them that they have nothing to be ashamed of.”
GUILTY
Experts welcomed Bear’s prison sentence after a jury at Chelmsford Crown Court found him guilty of one count of voyeurism and two counts of disclosing private sexual photographs and films in December last year.
Sophie Mortimer, manager of the Revenge Porn Helpline, says, “Intimate image abuse is a devastating crime that leaves victims feeling embarrassed and humiliated, affecting their emotional and mental health and personal relationships, as well as impacting working and social lives.
“Georgia Harrison has shown such courage in seeing a lengthy criminal justice process through to the end and I hope that she feels that justice has been done today. The sentence that has been passed has reflected the seriousness of the crime.”
Jane, who lives in London and works in retail, says she knows only too well all the emotions that Georgia has been through.
She says, “A month after my ex and I broke up, he asked me round and we spent one final night together. I knew splitting up was the right thing to do, but I was sad and lonely and sought comfort from him.”
VULNERABLE
But horrifically, unbeknown to Jane, he’d set up a camera and filmed them. A week later he sent her screenshots of their night together and threatened t
