I was a victim of revenge porn at school. People still call me a ‘slut’ today

Revenge porn: Noun; the sharing of private, sexual materials (photos or videos) of another person without their consent with the purpose of causing embarrassment or distress.

Put like that, it’s not exactly as foreign as some might like to think. In one way or another, by the time you’ve left uni, you’ve probably been affected somehow by revenge porn. Directly involved, connected to someone affected, or merely as a bystander, it’s neither ridiculous nor terrifically shocking to claim that we’ve all been a part of it.

But what is at the very least shocking, and realistically perpetually appalling is that today, Good Morning Britain revealed that there are revenge porn victims out there as young as eight. Let that hit home for a second. In the UK that’s a kid in Year 4, in the US that’s the 3rd Grade. So as well as learning all about the Romans and wearing homemade friendship bracelets, kids are growing up fast and being punished for it in the most disgusting, degrading and deteriorating way.

And I can only talk about it so empathetically because it happened to me. I wasn’t in Year 4, but I was still confused about the world, including my own body, and at just 15, I was about to get a whole lot more confused.

I was in Year 10, a few of my friends had lost their virginity, we were all getting drunk on Glen’s vodka bought for us by people we shouldn’t have known, and we’d discovered how to send photos from our phones. It was exciting to say the very least.

But with excitement comes loss of worries, loss of morals and sometimes loss of control. And this was definitely a time where it brought loss of control, yet what was not exciting about this loss of control, was that it was not my control I had lost, it was others’.

I had a good friend, for the purpose of this, we’ll call him Jonny. Jonny was a very intelligible 15-year-old, and Jonny was a very personable 15-year-old. We’d speak every day on MSN and we’d always put on the webcams. But never did he attempt to get me down to my underwear on webcam, and at that point, I respected him for it, because so many guys were trying to do that.

One day, Jonny and I planned to meet up near his home for a few hours, but something came up and I couldn’t make it. Jonny and I didn’t speak for days. I was overridden by a false sense of guilt because I cancelled, and I eventually told Jonny that I’d do anything to make it up to him. Anything.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, I’m getting catcalled in the school corridors by the boys, I hear the girls whispering in the changing rooms before P.E. People in the year above me were commenting on all of my tagged photos on Facebook, calling me disgusting names.

“No one will ever have sex with you.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Your boobs are horrible.”

“Your nipples are weird.”

Suddenly, insecurities that I already had were being amplified, but by other people. You’d think as a victim in a situation like this, people would turn their heads and call out others for it, but apparently, when everyone does it, it makes it okay to bully someone so viciously.

And what had caused it all? I sent a topless photo to my ‘friend’ Jonny to apologise for not meeting him. It somehow made its way through a number of schools and friendship groups, until hitting mine, where I became the ‘slut’ that people still see me as today, from one picture.

I couldn’t cry to my parents, I couldn’t tell on the bullies at school, I couldn’t do anything because as far as I was concerned, I was wrong. No one told me what revenge porn was, I didn’t even know it existed. I had just been made to believe that I was a disgusting human being with weirdly shaped boobs and no friends.

I never reported it, and eventually moved schools (although not for that reason) which made it easier. But even though so much time has passed, when I see friends from my old school they still mention it. It still hasn’t died out. And whenever I tried to confront Jonny I never got any answers from him – he just didn’t want to know.

Truth is, it doesn’t matter who you are, who your friends are, how old you are. When an intimate picture, meant for one person maliciously ends up in the view of a thousand others, to everyone else, you’re probably just another dirty human on the earth.

But six years on, I’ve come to realize that that’s not the case and I can do what I want with my body. The sad truth is those people were not my friends, because other people have no license to do as they please with my body.

@TheTab