Zara McDermott speaks out as government introduces tougher new laws against 'revenge porn'

Zara McDermott has spoken out about her experience of revenge porn as the UK government announces tougher laws against the practice.

The Love Island star, now 25, revealed that she was first a victim of revenge porn when she was just 14 years old and again at the age of 21.

This legislation is being welcomed by McDermott, who described her experiences of revenge porn as 'terrifying and lonely.'

It will be introduced as part of the Online Safety Bill, which will cover 'deepfakes' for the first time - the practice of altering existing pornography to make it look like someone without their consent.

There will also be new measures against the use of hidden cameras to take pornographic material of people without their consent.

One of the practices named include 'downblousing', which is when a camera is used to take a photograph down a person's top.

In a nutshell, it will make it a lot easier to bring perpetrators of the crime to justice.

Reflecting on her first experience of revenge porn, Zara said that she was pressured into sending an explicit picture of herself at the age of 14.

"I was pressured into sending a photo of myself to a boy in my year," she remembered. "He convinced me that it wasn't going to go anywhere, and he really liked me."

She said the experience of it being shared 'ruined my life'.

"It went to my teachers, it went to all of my peers, it got printed out and put on desks," she said.

Alamy / PA Images

Zara said that there was so little understanding of revenge porn at the time that she was actually suspended from her school as a result.

"I was vilified because I had sent that image and I'd created child pornography," she said. "And I was actually told that in my school and by authorities."

Thankfully, Zara said, people were a lot more sympathetic the second time she was a victim of revenge porn, which happened while she was in the Love Island villa in 2018.

"People were actually saying, 'Oh, poor Zara' and saying, this is really awful, that this happened to her,'" she remembered.

"And I was like, really? Like, I'm actually I'm actually not a criminal. And I and I've criminalised myself for so long. It's really sad the effect that that had - there being no laws around it at the time and what an effect that had."

She explained that she is sharing her experience in a bid to change the culture of self blame that's often enforced on victims of revenge porn.

"I don't want anyone to go through what I went through, that kind of feeling of shame and that feeling of self-blame and thinking, you've done something so wrong and you should be so embarrassed," she said. "I want to bridge that gap of knowledge [and] tell people that this is a crime."

Martyn Evans/Alamy

To put the scale of the UK's revenge porn problem into context, statistics have suggested as many as one in 14 people in England and Wales have been threatened with the exposure of intimate images.

Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Justice Dominic Raab said of the new legislation: "We must do more to protect women and girls, from people who take or manipulate intimate images in order to hound or humiliate them.

"Our changes will give police and prosecutors the powers they need to bring these cowards to justice and safeguard women and girls from such vile abuse."