Disgraced reality TV personality Stephen Bear could face paying more than £200,000 in damages to ex-girlfriend Georgia Harrison for leaking a sex tape online, a court has heard.
The 33-year-old former Celebrity Big Brother winner is currently serving a 21-month jail term for filming a sexual encounter on CCTV in his garden and then deliberately sharing the footage online for profit.
The video was uploaded to Bear’s OnlyFans account in spite of Ms Harrison’s pleas for it to be deleted, and it “went global” as it was copied and posted on porn websites, the High Court heard.
Ms Harrison, 28, waived her right to anonymity during Bear’s criminal trial to speak out about the impact of so-called “revenge porn” on the victims.
She sued Bear for civil damages, and shortly after his conviction in March for voyeurism and disclosing private, sexual photographs a High Court judge settled the case in her favour.
Ms Harrison has sued for £207,900 in damages and Master Victoria McCloud ruled on Tuesday that Bear should face aggravated damages. The judge also suggested she may consider ordering him to hand over the profits he made from the video as part of the compensation payout.
“He knew it would cause harm”, she said, of Bear’s decision to publish the video online.
“He proceeded in the face of objections and requests not to distribute, and he effectively went global with it for profit.”
The video was created by Bear on August 2, 2020, and when Ms Harrison realised it existed and he had shown it to a friend she pleaded with him to stop and delete the footage.
Instead, Bear posted it to his OnlyFans account on November 8, 2020 and later boasted that he had made £72,000 from subscribers as a result.
The clip ended up on 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, dubbing Bear’s actions “despicable”.
“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, was in court for Tuesday’s hearing to decide on damages.
In a statement, she set out how the video leaking was her “worst nightmare”, saying she had been “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 said the damages are likely to reflect that fact that Ms Harrison felt she had little option but to waive her right to anonymity at the criminal trial, as her identity and knowledge of the video was already so widespread.
“There is ongoing harm”, said the judge, accepting that if Ms Harrison has children they may learn of the existence of the video.
“That ain’t going to go away and it is something I have to bear in mind.”
Bear, who remains locked up at HMP Chelmsford, has ignored the High Court claim apart from filling in a form in 2022 denying liability.
He offered no evidence, and did not seek to take part in the court hearing to consider damages.
Bear will be subject to sex offender notifications for ten years, and is banned under a restraining order from contacting Ms Harrison for the next five years.
Master McCloud is set to make a ruling on damages next week.
