Love Island star Georgia Harrison opens up about ‘rife’ sex tape crime
A former Love Island contestant has spoken of the humiliation and shame she felt after her ex-boyfriend leaked footage of them having sex.
Former Love Island UKcontestant Georgia Harrison has spoken of the humiliation and shame she felt after her ex-boyfriend leaked footage of them having sex online – describing image-based abuse as “a rife crime”.
Commonly referred to as ‘revenge porn’, image-based abuse is the act of sharing or threatening to share naked or sexually explicit pictures or video without the depicted person’s consent, as well as taking explicit images or videos of people without their knowledge.
Last Tuesday, Celebrity Big Brother winner Stephen Bear was found guilty on two counts of disclosing private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress, and two counts of voyeurism.
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Bear, 32, faces up to two years in prison for uploading the footage of himself and Harrison on adult content platform OnlyFans. While Harrison, who waived her right to anonymity for the trial, testified that the sex was consensual, she was not aware she was being filmed.
“It’s actually been two years since the day it happened and to be honest I really did hide myself in a room for a long time,” the 28-year-old told Good Morning Britain on Thursday, her first interview since Bear was convicted.
“Everywhere I went people were speaking about it and I did feel hurt, humiliated, ashamed. I felt very used – that you could love and trust someone, and know that moment that you thought was a moment of love, was really a moment of making money for them.”
Bear, who denied all charges, reportedly made more than $3631 from sharing the video online.
Harrison said during an earlier court hearing that, the same day he’d first showed it to her and she’d begged him “never to send it” to anyone, she’d seen her former partner send the footage to someone via WhatsApp.
Later that year, she was made aware that it was circulating on OnlyFans.
“I had suffered in silence with the fear of [the video] surfacing for so long,” Harrison said on Good Morning Britain.
“When it finally did, I just thought, not only do I want to take a stand for myself, but I want to do it for other women and men because it is such a rife crime and people do not realise the effect it has on people.”
As she pointed out, Harrison’s experience is not uncommon.
Between January and March alone in Australia, there were more than 1000 incidents of image-based abuse, according to statistics from the eSafety Commissioner, up by about 400 on the year before.
Of those reports, 670 came from people aged 13 to 24, compared to 370 in 2021.
CEO of FullStop Australia, Hayley Foster, told news.com.au it’s “a massive problem”, and one “that is only increasing in prevalence … particularly in an increasingly digital age”.
“As social media has become a more important part of our lives, the consequences of ‘revenge porn’ have also increased,” Ms Foster explained, describing it as “another medium for gendered violence to play out”.
“The reach is far wider, and therefore the humiliation and shame associated is also impacted.
“As internet safety is taught in schools and to peers, the current messaging puts the onus on women to not share intimate photos in the first place, so to avoid having their privacy breached.
“The focus is not around the ramifications for perpetrators, consent and respecting boundaries, but is instead about what women should do to protect themselves. This puts the responsibility on women and removes accountability for potential perpetrators.”
Harrison, in a statement after Bear’s conviction, described his behaviour as “completely unacceptable, and those who choose to commit such crimes should and will be prosecuted”. “We are living in a time where so much of our lives and our children’s lives are spent online and it is so important that individuals are protected in the virtual world just as they are in reality,” she added.
“Social media has given us the egalitarian belief that we are all publishers, but what it hasn’t done is regulate what we should responsibly punish.
“I hope me taking a stand gives other men and women who have fallen victim to revenge porn the courage to seek justice and most importantly show them that they have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.”
Founder of UK charity Not Your Porn, Kate Isaacs, told the BBC she hoped Bear’s conviction would be “setting a precedent” for the future outcomes of such crimes.
“This is incredibly high profile and with the audience that Stephen Bear and Georgia Harrison have, I think this is even more impactful,” Ms Isaacs said.
“The fact she went public with this after someone had put her on the internet in a capacity that she didn’t consent to, for her to then come out and speak out against it – that bravery is unmatched.”
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