Georgia Harrison: ‘I didn’t want any other woman to go through this. My only option was to fight’

Campaigner and influencer Georgia Harrison is GLAMOUR’s Activist of the Year for her unflinching bravery taking on Stephen Bear in the UK’s most famous and historical image-based sexual abuse case to date. Here, she shares just how much this violation of her consent destroyed her, and why she fought to change the law to protect future generations of women…

Georgia Harrison, 28, was first in the spotlight aged 19 on The Only Way is Essex, followed by Love Island in 2017 where she was cast as the ‘bombshell.’ Her role, described in her forthcoming book Taking Back My Power, was to ‘ruffle feathers among existing couples, or even steal another girl’s partner,’ she was given 24 hours’ notice and entered the villa as a surprise contestant, after the show started, her first task was to pick a contestant to couple up with when couples were already together.

But it was her court case in December, 2022 against reality TV contestant Stephen Bear (who appeared on Shipwrecked, Ex on the Beach and then won Celebrity Big Brother) which made her the most famous. When Georgia and I meet at the GLAMOUR office in August she seems confident and in control, approaching her story with an older-than-her-years wisdom, which has become her new normal over the past three years, since she took Stephen to court after he distributed and profited from a private video of them having sex, filmed without her consent. It led to the UK’s most famous and historical image-based sexual abuse case to date.

Georgia notably waived her right to anonymity throughout the process. I ask her where she got the courage to take on Stephen Bear. “A lot of people say that I was very confident and it was a very brave thing to do,” says Georgia matter-of-factly, adding, “For me, it wasn't confidence, I'd allowed him to violate me for so long, not just in this incident. There were so many other things in the past he'd done to me to really just disrespect me, and I also noticed that he was doing it to so many other women. When it came to this situation, what he'd done was just so truly disgusting, that there was no way I could let him get away with it. In my opinion, I didn't have a choice. My only option was to fight against it.”

The two met on MTV’s The Challenge: War of the Worlds, where their romance started and quickly became turbulent when Georgia discovered Stephen’s proclivity for lying, alongside his manipulative behaviour. She said it even led to a production staff on the show warning her at the time, ‘He acts like a different person when he's not in front of you.’

Georgia’s initial impression of Stephen was positive, “I just thought he was really funny. He was a friend at first and he's really good at making you feel good about yourself. We would laugh all of the time.”

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Quickly there became a distinction between the person on the show and his personality in real life, as Georgia puts it, “in that situation, he was a good person, but unfortunately, in the real world, he wasn't.” She adds thoughtfully, “I also do genuinely feel that his personality declined over the years. I think there was a time where he was actually genuinely a good person, and I think the better aspects of himself shone through more. But as time's gone on, something's happened to him. And if anything, I think his family should have supported him more when he began to decline and got him some help before it was too late, but now it is too late.”

It was August 2020 when Georgia received a message from him, ‘Why don’t you come over for a cup of tea? I’m feeling shit, you’re feeling shit . . . What’s the worst that can happen?’ Georgia admitted to feeling low and isolated during the pandemic and she went round with the intention of seeing whether they could be friends. What started with tea, ended up with tequila shots and a day of reconnecting led to the two having sex in his garden. They had more drinks in his garden when Georgia details in her book being told by Stephen, ‘Oh, by the way, babe, I think some of what we just did might have accidentally been caught on my CCTV cameras.’ Unaware of being filmed, Georgia didn’t consent to the video being taken and asked for it to be deleted, however later in bed, she saw him send the footage to a friend on WhatsApp. In her book she details the betrayal she felt, ‘I broke down again, tears of shame, humiliation, regret and fear streaming down my face.’ She told Stephen that she didn’t consent to the video and that she’d go to the police.

Despite promising to delete the video, six weeks later friends of friends had mentioned they’d seen the video circulating. Then in November 2020, a man in America who ran a fansite for The Challenge, shared a screenshot of the video with Georgia saying it was on Stephen’s OnlyFans page. Georgia realised that the video had not only gone international, but that Stephen was profiting from the video for over a month. Within days, ‘Georgia Harrison sex tape’ became a top search term on Google.

I ask her at what point she went to the police, “It took about four days for me to really calm down and call the police,” she says, “And when I did call them, they actually said they'd already had three people report the incident. So even if I hadn't called the police, I would have been called as a witness on the case because it had already been reported.”

Georgia gave a full account to the Essex Police, knowing that ‘revenge porn’ (or image-based sexual abuse, as many victims feel ‘revenge’ insinuates that the victim has done something wrong), is notoriously difficult to prove. A third of all cases are dropped by the victim. ‘Revenge porn’ is legally described as ‘The disclosure of a private sexual image without consent – with intent to cause that person distress’, which means that the victim needs to prove that the perpetrator intentionally distributed the material.

In Taking Back My Power, Georgia candidly speaks about how the video ruined her ‘emotionally, professionally and financially.’ Brands stopped working with her and during that time Georgia’s health suffered as a result of stress. She went into septic shock – brought on by a burst ovarian cyst in her pelvis that had become infected – and her organs were beginning to fail. The doctor said she could have died. “Most of the time I was such a mess that my friends would just be coming over and making jokes,” she says, “when you're really at rock bottom, there's no point in saying, ‘It's okay.’" Since then, her focus has been finding ways to look after her physical and mental wellbeing, working with Robert Brennan, a mindset specialist, who specialises in the rapid release of phobias, anxiety, PTSD, addiction and the effects of trauma. While practising manifestation and also meditation, where she revisits times in her life she feels grateful, “I'll go back to when I first came out of Love Island,” she says, “and I was really liked, all my family were really proud of me.”

Stephen was arrested at London Heathrow Airport when he returned from Dubai on 15 January 2021 – his 31st birthday. He was released on bail, pending charges. He had pleaded not guilty to all three charges against him relating to explicit CCTV footage of them having sex in his garden in August 2020. Then four months later, Georgia received a call from the investigating officer at Essex Police telling her that the Crown Prosecution Service had authorised charges against Stephen Bear, charging him with two counts of disclosing private sexual images and voyeurism, for recording a sexual act in his garden. He pleaded not guilty, taking it to court. To win justice, Georgia needed to prove in court that he intended to cause her distress by publishing the video.

The stakes were high for Georgia, who says she was petrified, “Had I lost, not only would I have had this awful situation where so many people would've said I was a liar, because it had been in court, but I would never have worked again.” From her experience talking to victims who've had their case thrown out of court, or have lost down to a technicality, she was told of them having to spend the rest of their life being told that they're a liar. She understood the gravity of the situation.

While Stephen’s attitude couldn’t have been more polarised. During this time he launched a Twitter poll asking his followers to decide which colour suit he should wear to his trial. He arrived in a white Rolls Royce, wearing a pink suit, a black fur coat and smoking a cigar – in her book Georgia describes him as looking like ‘a glorified pimp.’ He continued to upload X-rated videos he’d made with his then-girlfriend on porn sites and social media. Georgia says he even captioned one of the video posts with, ‘At least she knows I’m filming her.’ He also went live on social media to protest his innocence ahead of the trial. At the time, he was arrested and admitted breaching his bail conditions.

The trial went on for a week, where nine men and three women on the jury would decide her fate. Stephen continued to show the kind of arrogant contempt of a reality villain, notably disrespecting barristers and the judge in court, lying about evidence, showing no remorse and bragging about women he’d slept with. During the trial, Georgia was asked why she waived her right to anonymity, telling the court, “I’ve chosen to waive my anonymity because it disappeared the moment the footage surfaced. Stephen Bear hung me naked on a wall for millions of people to see,” adding, “And I don’t want any other woman to go through this.”

The process was incredibly exposing for Georgia, “You have to look at images of you[rself] having sex and you have to confirm that it's you. Honestly, it's awful.” She adds, “So for someone to go through that and not get the outcome they deserve, it just breaks my heart to think about that.” Georgia adds that for most people having to prove intention to cause distress is incredibly difficult, as they have to deal with calculated individuals, but in her case Stephen really showed his true colours, “the way he handled everything, his intent to cause distress was so clear.”

On December 13 2022, as Georgia was turning 28, Stephen Bear was found guilty on all three counts. I ask what it’s like looking back on that time. “There were times where I would just be so low,” she says, “but I had this inner knowing that everything was going to be OK. I just knew that justice would be served. I had to think, ‘I may prevent this from happening to so many young men or women in the future’, because people will be looking at Stephen Bear and thinking, ‘Wow, you just don't do something like that. It's just not OK.’"

On Friday 3 March 2023, almost three years since Georgia Harrison was filmed without her permission having sex, Stephen Bear was sentenced to 21 months in prison, he is on the Sex Offender Register (meaning he will have notification requirements to keep police updated with his address and whereabouts for 10 years), and has a restraining order on him to not contact Georgia for five years. He was also required to pay Georgia £207,900 in damages - the highest ever sum awarded in an image-abuse case. It’s the end of August 2023 when we meet and Georgia tells me she is still yet to receive the damages from him. “I haven't received a penny from him,” she says explaining, “We actually got a charge on his house on the day of my court case, but a few hours before that he sold his house, which is actually worth just around £530,000, for £400,000, to a company. Which to me, I can't even believe that that's allowed to happen.” She adds, “And the company is now putting it back on the market for £530,000. But essentially, had the charge gone through, then I would've taken the money out of the house, with my lawyers, and that would've been it. But now he has the ability to pretty much withhold his assets. And I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to get any money from it. Not even the money I've put into the court.”

I ask her about the legal implications of him not paying her the court-ordered damages, “As far as I'm aware, it is legal, because I think if it wasn't, my lawyers would know. I just can't believe that someone is allowed to assist a prisoner, a sex offender, into selling assets whilst they're going through a court case. It had been in the press all week that I was about to win money, so it's crazy that there are these companies that you can go to, to assist you in that way.”

Georgia explains figuring out where he's dispersed the money “is near impossible.” Stephen was responsible for paying Georgia’s lawyers, who also haven’t been paid, despite him having an asset worth over half a million pounds. Although she’s keen to highlight that this isn’t a victory for him. “You're still sitting in prison, you've still had to sell your house. I've got a very good future ahead of me” she says proudly, “and I'll make my own fucking money.”

It’s her tenacity and focus that recently made history, changing the law around image-based sexual abuse. Her work campaigning has seen the ‘intention to cause humiliation or distress’ requirement removed, which was notoriously difficult to prove. It means that her new reality is attending 10 Downing Street for roundtables on the subject, “that's just normal to me now,” she says, “The first thing I think is, ‘What suit am I going to wear?’"

Recent activism has involved her campaigning for change for women and girls' inclusion in the Online Safety Bill - and also for Glamour's Consent Campaign, in partnership with Rape Crisis and Refuge, which is calling for a national conversation around consent. Campaigning may never have been her plan, but she’s taken to it naturally, telling me that her next focus is trying to make the footage itself illegal that circulates online (at present you can’t technically force companies to take it down).“I think I'm going to have to take it upon myself to help get that across the line,” she says forthrightly. Her new life in activism also involves being, as she describes it, a funnel for women who need advice on social media. “I know I can't always answer everything” she says, “but sometimes I'll have a flick through [social media] and when I can see someone really needs help, I'll answer them personally. I know so many women, they just want to be told that it's going to be OK. They just need to hear, ‘It looks scary, but once you get in there, everything's going to be fine, and just be strong and stay calm.’ It's something you could tell yourself, but when you hear it from someone who's been through it, I think it makes a huge difference.”

Alongside campaigning, she’s driven to take on more presenting roles (recently she told her story in ITV’s Revenge Porn: Georgia vs Bear) and is manifesting being in “a happy and healthy relationship.” I ask her how trust is possible after such a cataclysmic event? “I'm still a very trusting person, but I worry about the way that men view me.” She says honestly, “I know it's silly and I would tell other survivors that it's ridiculous, but I think it just leads you with an inner worry of, ‘Do they know about this video? If they don't don't know about it, how and when do I tell them?’ I think for anyone that's been a victim of image-based sexual abuse, there's always the quite horrifying fear of when I do meet someone and settle down, am I going to have this video out there forever that could one day get into the hands of your future children or your future partner?”

In her book, Georgia details how the experience has impacted going on dates, where she’s looking for hidden cameras. It’s something she’s working to understand the psychology behind, “Sometimes I might have a sudden feeling of, ‘Is there a camera there?" She says, “And that isn't because there is rationally ever going to be a camera in that situation, it's just because something has triggered me or reminded me of my past. If I can acknowledge that, I can let it go. I think a lot of victims of voyeurism suffer with that.”

At such a young age, it’s hard to comprehend facing such extreme levels of stress and pressure on such a public scale. I wondered what she’s learnt about herself during that time. “I think the whole process just taught me how brave I can be,” she says, adding “and how much of a thick skin I really do have. Because I think throughout my time in the media, which is over 10 years now, this has always been my biggest fear by far. I had to look my biggest fear in the eyes on a scale that's unimaginable, and I got through it. And if you can get through that, then you can get through pretty much anything.”

‘Taking Back My Power: Our Bodies. Our Consent’ by Georgia Harrison is out 26th October.