Love Island star Georgia Harrison has bravely re-watched the revenge porn video of herself. Disgraced reality star Stephen Bear made over £22,000 from sharing a secret clip of him and Georgia having sex on OnlyFans. She decided waive her right to anonymity to raise awareness of this type of crime as it went to court. He was released from prison in January last year after serving just 10 and a half months of his 21-month sentence.
Bear was found guilty of voyeurism and disclosing private, sexual photographs and films. Georgia rose to fame on The Only Way Is Essex in 2014 and joined Love Island in 2017. A court ruled Bear had to pay Georgia £207,900 in damages, which is the highest amount ever awarded in an image abuse case. He was also ordered to pay an extra £27,000 for compensation and repay profits he’d made from the video. During the sentencing, Bear was also slapped with a restraining order and told not to contact Georgia for five years. Georgia has been rebuilding her life following the harrowing incident and is taking part in a new documentary.
She will investigate similar crimes as well as her own for Georgia Harrison: Porn, Power, Profit. For the programme, Georgia decided to search where the video Bear published is still online. Speaking about what viewers can expect, Georgia said: "What we really wanted to do was get to the bottom of who is behind the posting of image-based sexual abuse that's still out there. "The first part involves me having to really look into where my video still is which is obviously a really tough thing to do, but by doing that we could then decipher how many different sites it was on. Then this gave us a way of following the video, figuring out who is actually behind the money and who is advertising next to this image-based sexual abuse.".
She added: "When it comes to DeepFake pornography, I have so many women now messaging me through my inbox for help. That's usually all forms of abuse, so image-based sexual abuse, DeepFake pornography, domestic abuse, anything to do with a struggling relationship or another person involved, people tend to reach out. "I was just seeing more and more issues around DeepFakes, a lot from mothers and it was affecting their children in school and I just thought, 'this is the same sort of feeling as image-based sexual abuse'. It is the same feeling of humiliation, a violation of literally being de-clothed without your consent. It's unconsented image-based abuse. Just because it's fake, doesn't mean it doesn't evoke the same emotion within the victim it affects.".
Speaking in court, Georgia recalled how the footage being published without her consent impacted her life and career. She said: "I had to live in fear that this was going to come out and my family were going to know about it. It was just like the worst feeling you can ever possibly imagine. I felt violated, I felt embarrassed - I hated myself for a really long time.". Judge Christopher Morgan said the victim, Georgia, lost work opportunities from multiple brands and was forced to pay legal fees due to the disgraced reality star's illegal conduct. He added that Bear posting the CCTV footage had a "devastating" impact on her life.
