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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Entertainment
Jessica Sansome

Georgia Harrison says she 'nearly died' as she breaks silence after Stephen Bear imprisonment

Georgia Harrison has said she 'nearly died' as she broke her silence in her first big interview since ex-boyfriend Stephen Bear was jailed for sharing a private sex video of them on his OnlyFans website. The former Love Island star gave evidence at the Celebrity Big Brother winner's trial before he was put behind bars for 21 months.

Bear, 33, and Harrison, who has waived her right to anonymity, were captured on CCTV cameras having sex in his garden in Loughton, Essex, on August 2, 2020. During the trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, Jacqueline Carey KC, prosecuting, said that Harrison and Bear had consensual sex at his home, but Ms Harrison did not know they were being recorded.

Harrison said that when Bear showed her the footage she told him "never to send" it to anyone and “made it plain how upset she would be if he did”, the prosecutor said. The complainant said that she saw Bear send the footage to someone on WhatsApp later that day, and later that year she was made aware that it was circulating online.

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Ms Carey said that Bear uploaded the footage “either himself or had it uploaded to OnlyFans and profited financially”. But Bear, who has also appeared on Ex On The Beach, denied all charges and claimed at trial that he deleted the footage that day and had shared it with no-one other than Harrison.

He was, however, found guilty at Chelmsford Crown Court of voyeurism and of two counts of disclosing private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress. Judge Christopher Morgan sentenced him on March 3 to 21 months in prison

Harrison, who has since announced her own documentary on ITV called Revenge Porn: Georgia Vs Bear, which will explore her personal story, has now revealed how she developed cysts and later went into septic shock after becoming a victim of revenge porn.

The 28-year-old model told The Sun that her career was “damaged” and she was “thriving” prior to seeing the footage circulating online. She said she would be suing over lost earnings.

She also said that she developed a cyst in her ovary when she was in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which she said can happen to women when they are “stressed out”. The former The Only Way is Essex star said: "I wanted to honestly keep leaving it without going to get some help.

Stephen Bear before he was sentenced to time behind bars earlier this month (PA)

"And my mum said to me…’I know something isn’t right’ (and told me to)…’get up and go to the hospital now’." Harrison added: "As I was in the car, I just started shaking and shivering and what I didn’t realise was I was going into shock and when I got to the hospital, they said that my kidneys, my pelvis and multiple of my organs were infected.

"And I was actually going into septic shock and had I stayed at home one more evening I would have died." An ovarian cyst, which are fluid-filled sacs, are common in women and do not usually cause any symptoms, according to the NHS.

Next week, Georgia will talk about her ordeal in her ITV2 documentary which she has been filming for more than two years. "There will be conversations and voice notes revealed between me and Bear where he denied it was me and denied he had released it. It shows just how heartless he was," she told the publication.

She added: "People don’t realise how much this damaged my career. I’ve gone through two years of being dropped by every brand who ever worked with me. My career was thriving prior to it."

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