Georgia Harrison pursued a civil claim against Stephen Bear for misuse of her private information after he uploaded a video of her engaged in sexual intercourse onto the platform, OnlyFans.
The term used by the media for this type of act is ‘Revenge Porn’, which is the uploading to the internet of sexually explicit images of an individual without their consent, such images having been taken during the course of a relationship between the perpetrator and the victim.
In a ruling on 26 July 2023, Master Victoria McCloud ordered Stephen Bear to pay £207,900 in damages to Georgia Harrison. The award was made up of £120,000 in general and aggravated damages and £87,900 in special damages. The general and aggravated damages part of the award will be to compensate Ms Harrison for the non-monetary aspects of her claim such as hurt feelings and distress caused by the misuse of her private information.
The special damages will be to compensate Georgia Harrison for the monetary loss she has suffered as a result of Stephen Bear’s actions, presumably, loss of earnings. It is difficult to know at this stage why Master Victoria McCloud awarded Georgia Harrison the sums that she did, as the full judgment is yet to be published.
Master Victora McCloud did release a statement following her ruling, in which she said:
“This is a case where the term ‘revenge porn’ is sometimes used, it’s a colourful term for the media. 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’.”
The Judge went on to state:
“Pornography is generally actually something done consensually. It was consensual sex but it certainly wasn’t consensual filming, and it was deeply violating.”
Interestingly, Master Victoria McCloud adopts the term ‘image-based abuse’ rather than ‘revenge porn’. This was the approach taken by Mrs Justice Thornton in the first reported ‘revenge porn’ case, FGX v Gaunt [2023] EWHC 419 (KB) in which she said:
“The term ‘revenge porn’ is commonly used to describe the Defendant’s conduct but the term conveys the impression that a victim somehow deserved what happened to them. The description suggested by Counsel and used in this judgment, is image-based abuse.”
It, therefore, appears that the term ‘image-based abuse’ will be adopted by the judiciary going forward for cases such as Georgia Harrison’s rather than the term ‘revenge-porn’.
The amount awarded to Georgia Harrison is the highest sum awarded in an image-based abuse case and one of the highest awards of all time in a privacy claim arising out of one single act. It will therefore be interesting to read the judgment and to consider the Judge’s reasoning for the level of the award.
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Ruby Ashby is a Senior Associate in our expert Dispute Resolution team, specialising in data breach claims, inheritance and Trust disputes and defamation claims.
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