It was a crime which, just 10 years ago no one had heard of, but now, revenge porn has become such a frequent offence that ministers have had to act fast in legislating against it. Last year, uploading intimate pictures of another person, sent to you in confidence, without consent, became illegal and could warrant up to two years in prison.

 

18-year-old “Kate”, an art student from Leeds, was a victim of revenge porn. She says: “I think it's brilliant that revenge porn has been made illegal. I can't believe it was ever legal anyway, it's disgusting.”

 

Kate tells her story for the first time.

 

Growing up in a really strict Christian family, Kate couldn’t wait to start university, where she could be free and independent without sticking to any rules.

 

She experienced “years of teenage rebellion, in the space of a year,” and lost her virginity.

 

On nights out, one of Kate’s friends would point out a guy in the club and say that he was Kate’s ‘quest’ for the night.

“One night I ended up going home with a guy. We said hi to his housemates who were sat in the lounge and went straight to the guy’s room”, she says.

 

Halfway through what Kate recalls as “the worst sex I’ve ever had”, she heard chuckling at the door. Looking up to see what the noise was, she saw two males stood with the door ajar, filming the ‘act’.

 

“They saw everything, and when I say everything, I mean absolutely full frontal, leave nothing to the imagination.”

 

“It's one of my worst fears so I remember jumping off the guy (nice camera shot for them) and covering myself with the quilt straight away.” After being embarrassed enough by what had just been filmed, she says there was nothing she could do, she didn’t want to then go and get the camera off them in the buff.

 

Instead Kate said she sat there until they left the room, silent and mortified. To her surprise, the guy she thought seemed genuine, lay there, doing nothing but laughing and telling the other boys to go away.

 

Sneaking out of the guys halls of residence, it began to dwell on Kate what had actually happened. “I just wanted to get home as quick as possible. I remember walking back to my halls, rehearsing a speech that I could tell my Mum in case the video was leaked and she found out.”

 

After Kate returned home, she spoke to her best friend about what happened, but didn’t try and pursue the issue. She says: “I was humiliated by the video but I didn’t realise you could go to the police about that and some part of me felt as though it was sort of a joke”.

 

Trying to forget that night, Kate was reunited again with her worst fear. Hearing laughter near the bar that she was stood at, on a night out, Kate turned her head to see a group of familiar lads laughing:

 

“Next minute, a guy I didn’t know, walked up to me and said ‘nice tits.’”

 

At that moment Kate realised that the familiar lads were the men who had filmed her. She stormed over to the boys and shouted at them to delete it, but there response was: “I’m only keeping it to tease my mate, don’t worry.”

 

After a month of reminders of what happened that night, Kate said things had ‘died down’ as she thinks the group of lads had finally graduated and left Leeds.

 

“I never spoke to the guy I had a one night stand with ever again, not about the video or anything else. I didn’t ever want to speak to him again.” Kate has not seen them since, but her nightmare of everybody seeing the video still haunts her.

 

She still believes that not going to the police was the right thing as she ‘doesn’t think they had any kind of awful intentions’, but says: “although talking about it properly for the first time has kind of put it into perspective.”

 

“It is just the most embarrassing thing that has even happened to me and the fear that they still have that video still lives with me to this day.”