She’s a glamorous ex-MEP newsreader who stars on GB News. But here ALEX PHILLIPS bravely reveals the torture of being the victim of a revenge porn blackmail plot by an ex-lover that cost her life savings and nearly destroyed her
Three years ago, when I was working in Brussels, I met a man who seemed almost perfect.
Good-looking, charming, quietly confident and hard-working, he was starting up a shopping website, designed to be the Belgian answer to Amazon.
I am naturally quite cautious, but we got on so well that I swiftly let him into my life and we began dating.
But after a year together, he tore my life apart. He stole all my savings, and worse, threatened that if I went to the police, he would send intimate videos he had supposedly recorded secretly, to every news site in Britain.
Although it is cathartic finally to speak about it, my main motivation is to help others and to bring about changes that will protect them
This week, I used my afternoon show on GB News, where I’m a presenter, to go public about what happened to me, and how my abuser — and revenge porn is a form of sexual abuse — has got away with it
I still find it hard to accept, but I had become a victim of threatened revenge porn.
For two years I stayed silent about it, too humiliated to tell anyone except close friends and family, but always with a sense of burning injustice that this man had been able to wreck my life and walk away scot free to do it again.
Finally, I decided I’d had enough. Having chosen to do a programme about revenge porn and asking other victims to tell their stories, I realised it would be hypocritical not to tell mine.
This week, I used my afternoon show on GB News, where I’m a presenter, to go public about what happened to me, and how my abuser — and revenge porn is a form of sexual abuse — has got away with it.
Although it is cathartic finally to speak about it, my main motivation is to help others and to bring about changes that will protect them.
There is currently very little protection for us victims of revenge porn. And too often people feel ashamed. I’m an intelligent, strong, hard-working, optimistic and secure woman — if it can happen to me, believe me, it can happen to anyone. No one should feel ashamed.
Few people are aware of how big a problem revenge porn — sharing explicit photos and videos with intent to cause harm — has become, or that it is getting much worse.
Revenge porn wrecks lives. And we simply can’t allow it to do so any longer
Despite having spoken out on my GB News show, I feel nauseous at the thought of putting my story out into the world even more
It has risen alarmingly during lockdown. According to figures published by the Revenge Porn Helpline, 2020 saw an 87 per cent increase in the number of people they supported, compared with the previous year.
In a poll at GB News, we found that one in ten people knows someone who has been a victim of revenge porn — while other surveys suggest that the incidence is even higher.
Worryingly, it’s prevalent among children. In 2019, well over 500 underage victims were reported to police in England and Wales.
But behind those statistics lie harrowing personal stories, as I know only too well.
My story began in 2018 when I was working as a media adviser to a Ukip MEP in Brussels. In a pub, watching the Football World Cup, I got talking to a handsome, charismatic man.
There was an instant connection. He was half-Belgian, half-Congolese. He told me that he worked in Brussels four days a week, and spent weekends with his mother in the Belgian city of Namur.
A week later, England were playing, and I was having friends round for a barbecue, so I invited him.
I like to think I’m usually a shrewd judge of character — and I had no reason to believe he was anything other than what he said he was. When I introduced him to my friends, they all loved him.
We enjoyed a year together, spending four nights a week in Brussels, with him returning to his mother at weekends — or so he told me.
Then, in May 2019, I went back to England to campaign to become an MEP for the Brexit Party.
What happened next I remember with horrifying clarity.
I opened my laptop to do a radio interview. The last person to use my laptop had been my partner, and his Skype account, on which he was still logged in, popped up.
On the screen was a picture of a newborn. Underneath, he had written: ‘Welcome to the world, my baby daughter.’
I froze. I thought: ‘What? That’s not possible.’
I immediately called him and asked why he had posted a picture of a baby claiming it was his, hoping for some kind of explanation.
He faltered, stumbling over his words. Then pretended that the phone had lost its signal.
Suddenly, I knew something was terribly wrong. This man is not who I had thought he was.
I began reading the Skype conversation he had left open on my screen. I discovered that all the time he had been with me, he had also been in a relationship with another woman in Brussels. Whenever I thought he was with his mother, he was mere kilometres away living a lie, with her.
And now they had had a baby.
I’ve been shocked by some of the comments I’ve already received along those lines since speaking out this week
The enormity of all his lies came crashing down. I recalled a story he had told at 3am one morning recently after he had received a phone call. He had claimed a cousin had been involved in an accident in Brussels and he had to rush to the hospital.
I helped him pack an overnight bag and ordered his Uber. Now I realised I had paid for his taxi to the hospital for the birth of his secret baby.
A few days later, still floored by the betrayal, I went to the supermarket. But when I tried to pay, my card wouldn’t work.
I couldn’t understand it. I used my British bank account as a savings account only and never touched it while I was in Brussels — it should have had plenty of cash.
I looked online and my stomach dropped. My money had gone.
All I could see was one transaction after another to websites and graphic designers, along with many mysterious debits to unknown people.
Over the past few months, he had spent thousands of pounds of my money, supposedly building his shopping website (which has come to nothing) and paying for a baby he had had with another woman.
I felt like my life had been blown to pieces. How could he have led such a treacherous double life? How could I not have known?
I was coming to realise that everything he had told me had been a lie. He was a master-manipulator.
When I finally spoke to him, I told him: ‘Pay back the money you stole from me or I’m going to the police.’
He laughed coldly. Then he replied: ‘I’ve got videos of us, intimate videos. If you go to the police then I’m going to send those videos to every newsroom in the UK.’
I felt sick. I didn’t know if these videos existed, but when I realised the extent of his exploitation and deceit, it seemed highly plausible.
As he was in the technology business, he could easily have filmed me without my knowledge, and could use obscure IP addresses abroad to upload footage anonymously.
The idea of people seeing me like that, my family, everyone I knew, complete strangers — especially now I was a public figure, as I had been elected an MEP — was horrific.
However, I knew that the Government had made revenge porn a crime in 2015, so I thought that the police would sort it out.
But when I went to the police station in Eastbourne, East Sussex, and told them the story, they just looked at me blankly.
He had stolen from my account while he was in Belgium. This meant, they said, that it was a matter for the Belgian police. As for the revenge porn — had he posted it online?
‘No,’ I explained, ‘but he has threatened to do so.’
‘Well,’ they shrugged, ‘there’s nothing we can do.’
I was aghast. I tried the Belgian police, but they were just as unhelpful, saying that since he had stolen from a British bank account, it was a matter for the UK police.
As for the revenge porn, they told me this was simply ‘a row between a boyfriend and girlfriend’.
I can remember coming off the phone while on the train back to London. I had to get off at the next station and sit on the platform. I didn’t have the energy to take one more step. I was broken.
Yet that wasn’t all. He continued threatening and blackmailing me via WhatsApp and email.
Thankfully, my British bank, the Co-operative, was amazing. It worked with me and all the companies he had paid from my account to recoup about half the money taken.
But I was still thousands of pounds out of pocket. The money he had paid towards his baby daughter could not be retrieved.
What struck me most was that I thought this sort of thing only happened to other people.
I’m careful about personal safety and who I trust. But, like so many women, first of all you blame yourself: how did I allow this man to live under my roof, lie to me, extort me, blackmail me?
You start doubting. It destabilises you and undermines your ability to trust your own judgment and your ability to make decisions.
Then there is the humiliation: when people find out, what will they think of me? I felt desperate.
A few days after I had discovered the truth, I went on the panel of the long-running BBC show Question Time for the first time.
No one would have known I was in such turmoil, but afterwards I collapsed, exhausted.
My family were incredibly supportive, and I also had the distraction of my new job as an MEP — but I couldn’t enjoy even that.
Like most victims of threatened revenge porn, I’ve still had no justice. Conviction rates for this crime are low
It was torture: financial, emotional and sexual abuse. I had shared my bed with someone who was not who he had said he was. I felt out of control and vulnerable, but above all I was left with a massive sense of injustice.
He had done despicable things — and, worse, he had got away with it all.
Though he wouldn’t return my calls and he had deleted his social media accounts, I eventually managed to reach his sister and tell her what he had done. His own family didn’t even know he had a baby.
She tried to give me a small sum to shut me up (I declined): this clearly wasn’t his first time. It turned out he had got through life by finding women to manipulate, steal from and threaten with revenge porn.
He operates online under multiple aliases. I was not his first victim and I doubt very much whether I’ll be his last.
Like most victims of threatened revenge porn, I’ve still had no justice. Conviction rates for this crime are low — and plummeting further — with victims too disheartened or scared to come forward, fearing they won’t be believed or they’ll be blamed.
I’ve been shocked by some of the comments I’ve already received along those lines since speaking out this week.
But make no mistake, revenge porn is a nasty, manipulative, sexually exploitative crime, regardless of whether the filming was done with consent or — as in my case — secretly.
Rather than victim-blaming, it must be tackled seriously, starting with free porn websites.
Mainstream websites are cesspits of abuse, and the Government does almost nothing about regulating them. Often, it’s impossible to tell if the videos they host are filmed consensually or not. Whether the people are vulnerable, exploited, possibly blackmailed or assaulted.
No one seems to be aware of how much criminality goes on when platforms accept user-generated content. They must be regulated.
Rather than victim-blaming, it must be tackled seriously, starting with free porn websites. Pictured, stock photo of a woman holding a phone
The lawlessness and impunity of social media (often where revenge porn is posted) should also horrify the Government.
It’s going to take a huge effort to put the genie back in the bottle, but it has to be done to safeguard future generations. We cannot allow abuse to be perpetrated on an industrial scale.
Revenge porn needs to be treated as a sex crime, with victims having access to the same support services as sexual abuse survivors. And those convicted should be registered as sex offenders.
Revenge porn currently comes under the Communications Act, so the maximum sentence is two years. There are amendments proposed to bring it under the Domestic Abuse act, and to make threatening revenge porn a crime, too. This needs to happen — fast.
But, most importantly, we need to talk about it more.
For me, the impact of my former partner’s abuse continues.
There’s the lasting humiliation of being duped and the fear that the videos, if they actually exist, are still out there. But perhaps worse is the fact that, aged 37, I am not in a relationship because I don’t feel ready to trust anyone.
Despite having spoken out on my GB News show, I feel nauseous at the thought of putting my story out into the world even more.
Two years ago, I considered going public, but I wasn’t ready then — this time is different.
Revenge porn wrecks lives. And we simply can’t allow it to do so any longer.
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