Disgraced reality TV personality Stephen Bear has been ordered to pay more than £200,000 in damages to ex-girlfriend Georgia Harrison for leaking a sex tape online in a “gross invasion of privacy”.
Bear, 33, is currently serving a 21-month jail sentence for secretly filming a sexual encounter on CCTV in his garden and then deliberately sharing the footage online for profit.
The former reality TV star sent the video to friends despite Ms Harrison’s pleas that it be deleted, he then uploaded it to an OnlyFans account and subsequently it “went global” by being copied and posted on porn websites, the High Court heard.
She told civil proceedings the leak of the sex tape was her “worst nightmare” and left her feeling “violated and used”.
In a ruling on Wednesday, Master Victoria McCloud ordered Bear to pay £207,900 in damages to Harrison for a leak on a “grand scale”, in one of the highest ever payouts in breach of privacy cases.
“This is a case where the term ‘revenge porn’ is sometimes used, it’s a colourful term for the media”, said the judge.
“This is a gross act of violation by a man towards a woman through the medium of the internet. A more appropriate term is ‘image based abuse’.
“Pornography is generally actually something done consensually. It was consensual sex but it certainly wasn’t consensual filming, and it was deeply violating.”
The judge added that Bear had “gaslighted” Ms Harrison by trying to pretend she was herself responsible for posting the video online, he has largely ignored civil court proceedings, and appears to have used the incident as a springboard to launch a porn career in the months before he was jailed.
Ms Harrison’s barrister Gervase de Wilde also told the court that Bear – while shunning the legal proceedings - appears in the last few days to have attempted to sell a property under his control through a company promising a “quick sale”.
“It seems he is following the media coverage and has acted on the media coverage”, he said. “The defendant has been completely unrepentant, there’s no apology, and he has not offered assurances about the video and dealings with it in the future. He is completely brazen, even in the face of his conviction.
“The only activity he had undertaken is to attempt to dissipate assets, being more focused on the consequences of this claim than actually engaging with the substance.”
Reacting to the ruling, Ms Harrison thanked legal firm Payne Hicks Beach for supporting her through civil proceedings, saying: “They have been true heroes on my journey to justice, and I will forever be in awe of how talented they are.
“Once I officially receive the settlement sum, I will be donating part of it to multiple charities that have helped support me and other victims of image-based sexual abuse.”
Bear was convicted in March after a criminal trial on charges of voyeurism and disclosing private, sexual photographs.
The court heard he had consensual sex with Ms Harrison on August 2, 2020, in a part of his home he knew would be in view of the CCTV cameras.
When he later told her about the footage, Ms Harrison asked for the film to be deleted but became aware that Bear had instead shared it with friends.
The footage was posted to OnlyFans on November 8, 2020 and Bear later boasted that he had made £72,000 from subscribers as a result.
The clip ended up on X-rated websites including pornhub, as Ms Harrison reported Bear to the police and her mother engaged the services of an ethical hacker to tried to wipe it online.
“This case is the most serious single infringement of privacy rights that has ever come before this court by way of a damages claim”, said barrister Gervase de Wilde, representing Ms Harrison.
“The video had enormous circulation, global circulation.”
He put forward evidence of “publication on an absolutely vast scale”, and said the hacker employed by the Harrison family concluded the video had been shared too widely to ever be successfully wiped.
Ms Harrison, a former star of shows including The Only Way Is Essex, Love Island and Olivia Meets Her Match, told the court she felt “completely and utterly exploited, like he had hung me up naked on a wall for millions of people to see and there was nothing I could do about it”.
She told the court her life “changed forever”, she felt “violated and used”, and that she lost her “sense of self-respect and personal dignity”.
Ms Harrison said she endured a sense of fear in the months when she knew the video existed but Bear had not yet put it online.
“I never wanted to sell sexual content such as pictures and videos of me online”, she said. “I know I could have made a lot of money. I will never recover from the way Stephen Bear took that decision out of my hands.”
She added that she believes Bear launched a porn career on the back of the video leak, making yet more profit from the breach of her privacy.
Master McCloud imposed an injunction on Bear at today’s hearing, preventing him from using the footage again.
The judge said the payout to Ms Harrison is bigger than compensation awarded to the late F1 tycoon Max Mosley following the publication in a newspaper of images of a sadomasochistic orgy.
She said the law as it currently stands prevented her from awarding “punitive damages” for Bear’s actions or extending compensation to include the recovery of profits he made from the video.
“That’s not something I have the power to do”, she said, while referencing the Online Harms Bill which is still being debated in Parliament.
Hanna Basha, who worked with Nick Grant on the case from Payne Hicks Beach’s Privacy and Media Team said: “This has been a difficult, complicated and emotional case. I am pleased that we were able to support Georgia, and I hope her strength in pursuing this highlights to other victims that there is help and support available for them and that the courts take these matters very seriously.”
