I was a victim of revenge porn, this is my story

Revenge porn, as defined by the government, is the “sharing of private, sexual materials, either photos or videos, of another person without their consent and with the purpose of causing embarrassment and distress”. It sounds pretty clear-cut, fairly clinical, easy to understand. But when you’re experiencing it firsthand, it’s so much more than that definition. It can change or ruin your life – it almost did mine.

Although I would love to be someone who stands up and puts my name on my experience, to encourage other people to come forward, my revenge porn experience is ongoing. So much so that I’m afraid my ex-boyfriend, Rob*, would do it again if he saw me talking about it. It’s fear of being a victim of a crime again which stops me being open and honest – but not shame. There’s absolutely no shame in being the victim of revenge porn – although it can feel the opposite of the time.

It’s probably best to give a bit of context. I was in a relationship with Rob, for little under a month. We met through a mutual friend when I was 19 and he was 17 – I should have seen the warning signs straight off, he had originally lied and said he was 18. We lived quite far apart, so most of our talking was done through social media. Throughout the short relationship he had started to become quite manipulative and seemed to have a real problem with lying. Once, after an argument, he threatened to commit suicide, sending me a picture of a handful of pills, which I discovered was stolen from a mutual friend’s Instagram, showing her meds after an operation. The lies escalated, becoming more and more bizarre if we argued, so I’d always end up feeling sorry for him.

The last straw was the day he told me he was staying at a hotel, in the same room, with another girl before he went to watch a football match. I was exhausted, and felt betrayed, so I dumped him. That’s when all my problems began. The threats rolled in, 20 phone calls a day off of an unknown number. When I stayed at the house of a mutual male friend he became convinced we were having sex and threatened to burn the house down or kill me. Although I was freaked out, I convinced myself it was because he was panicking after the break-up, that it would die down. Little did I know.

A week later, I’m scrolling through Twitter. We were both on there, and knew some of the same people. I get a notification, and there, for all the world to see is a picture of me, just in a pair of knickers, that was taken without my knowledge. It’s fair to say I was paralyzed with fear, but at the time, I just couldn’t comprehend what was happening.

Luckily, once I recovered from the shock, I had the foresight to screenshot it as proof, as I knew immediately I would go to the police. I told him as much, over a shaken but angry phone call, while trying to pull myself together and take no shit. All the while, it was being retweeted and I was being mocked online for being fat, a “slag” or “slut”, who “shouldn’t have let him take a nude of me in the first place”. The people who were attacking me online didn’t seem to understand – I didn’t let him take it.

Things got worse as they circulated. Soon my dad had seen it, and wanted to know who he was, and handle it by “fucking him up”. Thankfully none of the rest of my family saw it, and most of my friends are sympathetic, except for one girl, who sided with him and eventually struck up a flirtation and started sending him nudes. In a depressing twist, he ended up sharing those photos without her consent too.

So I went to the police. They spoke to me at the station, asked all the relevant details. The policeman interviewing me asked how long we had been together. When I said it was a month, he did the oh-so familiar “why did you let him take explicit pics of you”. I had to explain but he simply said “you should be more careful”. They rang Rob, as they found him on the system. Unknown to me at the time, he had previous convictions for domestic abuse on his ex. They gave him a verbal warning. He accepted it.

I thought it’d be over. Two months later, I had found my current partner. I was really happy and beginning to rebuild my life – and it was though Rob knew it and wanted to drag me back. In a sickeningly familiar scenario, I logged on to Twitter again to discover a picture of me topless, this one taken while I was asleep. But unlike before, I wasn’t upset: I was angry. I ignored it, got as many people as possible to report it and screenshotted it again as evidence, as I did with all the threats. Once again, I went to the police.

This time, they did even less. Being told throughout, “cyber crime isn’t something given priority by our force, not until he actually lays a hand on you”. He lived 50 miles away, so the police considered him not to be a threat. Again, he got a verbal warning, as he denied it throughout, with the police ignoring my huge amount of evidence. He was 17 so they declared him to just be “immature”. That was the last I heard from him.

I moved on with my life, I went to university, and I tried to ignore the worrying gossip that continued to plague me, about Rob and how he badly treated his new girlfriend. But it’s clear to me that I had a lucky escape. The experience was difficult, and I was extremely disheartened with how the police handled it, but I put it down to bad lucky, as well as the fact at the time the idea of “revenge porn” was a fairly new phenomenon.

The best advice I can give to anyone in this situation: report it. There’s absolutely no shame, whether you sent the pictures or if they were taken without consent- you are the victim here. Do not feel like it’s in any way your fault. Screenshot everything, keep it safe and be ready to show it to the police. You’re also not alone. It’s a worse reflection on that person who posts them online, than it is on you, trust me.

*Names have been changed.