A young Aussie reveals how a photo being shared without her permission turned her school life into ‘hell’

Molly was 15 years old when a private naked photo of her was leaked online. It turned her life into “hell”.

Molly Gaut was 15 years old when a naked photo of her was leaked online. She’s 19 now, and the “incident is still talked about”. 

Ms Gaut was not old enough to drink, not old enough to drive and not old enough to vote when her private intimate images were shared on Instagram and Snapchat, via text, air-dropped, printed out, and even sold without her consent. 

The Sydney local was just a kid, meaning the sharing of her images was essentially the distribution of child pornography, but that didn’t seem to matter to her peers.

“I lost my trust in people, for example men,” Ms Gaut told news.com.au. “From that point on I knew nothing was safe.”

This week, along with parents from across Australia, we are calling on the federal government to raise the age limit at which children can access social media to 16 as part of a national campaign, Let Them Be Kids, to stop the scourge of social media.

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Ms Gaut’s school photo the year her photos were shared without her consent. Picture: Supplied

She is now 19 and still dealing with the fallout of what happened. Picture: Instagram/MollyGaut

Ms Gaut said she’d been “tipped off” about a month before the situation blew up that her nudes were getting leaked. Confronting it wasn’t something she could stomach so she just tried to “brush it off” and forget about it.

It wasn’t until two girls a few years younger told her that nude images of her were being circulated that she had to finally acknowledge what was happening.

Her immediate reaction was that she didn’t want anyone else to know, especially not adults, but the school quickly found out. 

Ms Gaut said that a girl who used to bully her told one of her teachers that her nudes were being sold and shared. She claims the bully did this not to protect her but because she wanted to humiliate her and get her in trouble. 

“I remember being called to the office and crying my eyes out. Naturally, the police were contacted, and I had to make a statement,” she said. 

Ms Gaut knew who had leaked her private images. It was someone she thought she was “in love with”. 

She instantly knew he had betrayed her, but her immediate reaction was that she wanted to “protect him” from the police and the adults. 

“I was scared for him. I lied to the police and said I let him share these with friends and that I didn’t care,” she said. 

She said the experience was a violation. Picture: Instagram/MollyGaut

Despite years passing, she said people still talk about it. Picture: Instagram/MollyGaut

Her parents confiscated her phone immediately, but she managed to contact him via an old device. She said he denied ever sharing them and claimed it was a mistake. 

At the time she was desperate to believe him.

She was young. She said it seemed exciting, but safe, to share nude photos and she never in a million years thought he’d share them around the school. She thought it was something special between them.

“I was under the belief this man cared for me and wanted me and wanted to explore our relationship in a different form,” she said.

“I felt, although I had been violated, that if I could move on, I was capable of so much more.”

Worse than the leak, was the bullying that followed, which led her to attempt suicide. Picture: Instagram/MollyGaut

Despite the humiliation and the police, Ms Gaut turned up at school the next day eager for things to return back to normal.

“The next day at school was hard, the way people looked at me and talked about me like I was somehow to blame, like I was this slut,” she said. 

From there, Ms Gaut dealt with daily bullying.

“The taunting continued, girls yelling STD names at me and surrounding me in bathrooms and following me to class,” she said. 

Ms Gaut said that she just tried to “push through”, but that school was “hell” from 2019-2020, and the non-stop bullying led to her making several suicide attempts that landed her in hospital. 

Perhaps the saddest thing is Ms Gaut said she reckons she could have got over her nudes being leaked, but she couldn’t handle the bullying. She ended up seeking treatment.

“Not from having my nudes leaked but from the aftermath of how people treated me,” she said. 

Ms Gaut said she knows she didn’t do anything wrong.

“I have no regrets whatsoever and will stand by the fact I did nothing wrong; we are a generation that connects online,” she said.

“It makes sense for people to explore sexually online as well as in person.

“My parents and close friends are incredibly proud of me and are still shocked I never moved schools and continued to go.”

Originally published as A young Aussie reveals how a photo being shared without her permission turned her school life into ‘hell’