Stephen Bear arrived at the courthouse in a chauffeur-driven white Rolls-Royce on Friday, but the disgraced English reality TV star left in the back of an Essex police vehicle.
A U.K. court has sentenced Bear to 21 months in prison after he shared CCTV footage of himself and “Love Island” star Georgia Harrison having sex.
Bear uploaded the videos to OnlyFans without Harrison’s consent and made more than £2,000 (approximately $2,400), according to the Independent. The then-couple was captured having sex on security cameras in Bear’s garden in Loughton, Essex, on Aug. 2, 2020.
According to the Independent, the prosecution said although the sex was consensual, Harrison had no idea they were being filmed. When Bear showed her the footage, she made it clear she was upset and insisted he “never to send” it to anyone.
The complainant said she became aware that Bear shared the footage on WhatsApp that day, and later that year discovered it was circulating online.
Last year, Harrison said she was a victim of revenge porn, and hoped that speaking out would give other victims the courage to seek justice. Revenge porn is considered the act of sharing sexually explicit materials involving someone who has not agreed for the content to be shared. It can be especially common as a form of retaliation after a breakup. Revenge porn became a criminal offense in England in 2015, a year after California made it illegal to create or distribute revenge porn.
Bear, who won “Celebrity Big Brother” and appeared on “Ex on the Beach,” denied all charges against him, claiming that he never shared the footage and deleted it the day he discovered it.
But the Chelmsford Crown Court found him guilty of voyeurism and two counts of disclosing private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress. Now Bear is required to sign the sex offenders’ register, and cannot legally contact Harrison for the next five years.
After Bear was taken into custody, Harrison spoke outside the court, saying she was “happy and relieved that this matter is finally over.”
“Today’s sentence is a vindication of what I’ve been put through and sends a clear message that the police and the courts take this matter very seriously,” she said.
“I want to let all other victims of this crime know that I stand in solidarity with them and I have absolutely no regrets on waiving my anonymity. I hope that this puts anyone off committing this sort of crime and I hope for anyone else who has been a victim of it [that] it gives them some sort of justice.”
