Bella Thorne shares reason why she released her own explicit photos after being blackmailed
Warning: This article contains discussion of rape which some readers may find distressing.
Bella Thorne has reflected on the moment she decided to leak her own intimate photos after a hacker tried to blackmail her and threatened to release them.
The 28-year-old American actress emotionally recalled how the 2019 incident ‘felt like being re-raped,’ and her ‘power was taken away’ during her appearance on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast on Wednesday (5 August).
She explained how it began when she got a text from someone she didn’t know and was confused, thinking it must be a fan who somehow got her phone number.
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However, she realised it was something more sinister when they continued to text and sent a photo of herself that she had never posted.
He continued to send photos, with the ordeal taking place when Thorne was on her book tour for The Life of Wannabe Mogul - a collection of poems that chronicled her personal struggles.
She explained on the podcast: “While I’m doing this press tour talking about molestation and dark s**t, this man is threatening me and won’t stop threatening me.”
Thorne showed her manager the messages, and told him: “I don’t know what to do. It just feels like this is what’s happening again. My power was taken from me then for so many years, and now, he has this thing of me, and he’s taking it again.”
The actress emotionally continued: “It felt like being re-raped and also feeling this, like everything will end if he does this. Everything will end for you.
“All the s**t that you’ve been through, everything you’ve done to get to this point’s all going to be blown up and just, it’s gone if he does this and having someone else have that power and that agency over your own body.”
As well as being sent intimate photos of herself, the hacker also sent Thorne photos of people she knew, to show how ‘powerful’ he was.
Thorne said that her manager saw her as a ‘person and not a client,' and supported her choice to release the photos herself.
Discussing the difficult decision to release the photos herself, the former Disney Channel star said: “I was like, ‘Well, at the end of the day, if I’m gonna lose my whole career and everything I’ve worked for, being 20 at that time, and working since I was eight, I’m gonna just say f**k it all, and I’m never gonna work again, and my life’s over because this man’s gonna do this, so I’ll just do it.”
She added: “You wanna say she’s so sexual? Okay, so then I’ll be sexual. You wanna do this to me? You wanna take this from me? So I’m gonna take it and sell it instead.”
Thorne also reflected on the trolls who said she was 'faking it' after she released the photos.
The actress said: “The worst part of that was people saying, 'You did this. You are faking it. You just want to show us your t*ts. You want us so badly to see your private parts that that’s why you’re doing it. You want it.’ And that to me really broke me."
It was revealed in July 2021 that British hacker Joseph O’Connor was the one behind the messages.
He had hijacked more than 130 accounts in July 2020, including those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk and Barack Obama.
In June 2023, he was sentenced to five years for cyber crimes.
If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article and wish to speak to someone in confidence, contact the Rape Crisis England and Wales helpline on 0808 500 222, available 24/7. If you are currently in danger or need urgent medical attention, you should call 999.
Topics: Entertainment, Celebrity, Podcasts
Madison Burgess