Children as young as 8 are becoming victims of revenge porn, revealing a massive gap in sexual-health education

• Children as young as eight years old are becoming victims of the nonconsensual sharing of nude images, otherwise known as "revenge porn," according to data published by The Guardian.
• Perpetrators of the crime are also getting younger. The Guardian found that in the UK, one in three people who shared nude images and videos of children in 2019 were also under 18.
• Insider spoke to experts who warned that schools are not doing enough to tackle this problem, and said that young people should be encouraged to speak out.
• The UK recently mandated a new sexual-health curriculum to be taught from this September, but allowed schools to delay its introduction to Spring 2021 due to disruptions caused by the pandemic.
• Insider also spoke to a young victim of revenge porn, who shared her experience seeing her private images leaked and shared around her high school.

It was just before the morning bell when Cassidy found out that a semi-naked image of her was making its way around her high school.

"I remember feeling like my heart sunk right to the bottom of my body," she recalled to Insider in a phone interview.

"I remember looking up and around me the whole time, just thinking to myself: 'Who here has seen this picture?'"

Cassidy is a pseudonym — the woman, now 23, asked not to be identified by her real name to the sensitive nature of the matter. Her identity is known to Insider.

The Seattle native was 16 when she sent her then-boyfriend two private pictures of herself, partially naked, in her bedroom. Several months after they broke up — when she was 17 — almost everyone at her high school had seen it.

It was never clear how her classmates got the photos — Cassidy's ex repeatedly maintained his innocence and said he had deleted the pictures.

Cassidy said she was an ambitious student, aspiring actress, and a member of the student council. She said she remembers feeling concerned about what the leaked pictures would do to her reputation.

"Being a teenager, I was very insecure about myself, and I just felt unsure about things and embarrassed because this picture was this representation of me that I didn't want out there," she said.

"I felt like the core of my anxiety came down to the fact that I didn't know what people thought about me. I know that sounds stupid and bad to think, but that's exactly what went through my mind."

Cassidy later found out that she wasn't the only one who had her private pictures shared nonconsensually, and that boys at her school had also been sending each other pictures of other girls for months. In total, those boys had shared between themselves more than a dozen pictures of other girls, she said.

After her school learned about the photos — one of the other girls' mothers found out and reported it — Cassidy said she felt "judgment" from people around her, despite having supportive friends and parents.

"I remember when I was called into the high school office, one of the people in charge mentioned to me that it was child pornography and he said that what I did was illegal, which shocked me because I didn't do anything other than sending a picture to my boyfriend, " she told Insider.

Cassidy's story is all too common.

More and more children are becoming victims of the nonconsensual sharing of nude images, otherwise known as "revenge porn," according to recent studies.

Earlier this month The Guardian reported, citing data from the police, that 541 people whose sexually explicit images or videos were shared in the UK in 2019 were under the age of 18.

The youngest of those were were eight years old, the newspaper reported.

Data for the US is not yet known.

While researchers previously focused on children in their early to late teens, it appears that revenge porn is alarmingly rife among even younger people.

"Children are getting smartphones and social media accounts at much younger ages these days, so I can easily see how numbers like that arise," Will Gardner, CEO of Childnet International, told Insider.

Childnet International has been working alongside the Internet Watch Foundation charity and UK government-funded Revenge Porn Hotline on finding ways to tackle online sexual abuse among young people.

The consequences of revenge porn can be devastating for the mostly-female victims, who can face bullying at school and lasting psychological damage. Some have reported leaving school as a result.

"From what we've seen, victims don't feel comfortable talking about this issue and coming forward. My concern is that if young people don't feel able to report that, they will eventually just come to accept it and then think that it's just normal behavior," said Gardner.

"That would be a tragedy and a real disservice to young people and it doesn't properly reflect their needs."

"So we do need to talk about these really tricky issues with young people in an open and understanding, non-victim-blaming way."

1 in 3 people sharing revenge porn are also children, police say

As young people increasingly reliant on technology, they have also become more vulnerable to new forms of sexual harassment.

More and more young people are becoming perpetrators, too.

According to the same data published in The Guardian, a third of the people who shared nude pictures and videos of children nonconsensually in Britain last year were also under 18.

Experts are now calling on schools to do better at educating children about sexual health.

The UK government recently mandated a new relations and sex-education curriculum, which includes courses on LGBTQ+ relationships and how to navigate consent. This is the first update to the curriculum in 20 years.

The government had made the curriculum mandatory in all schools this September but has since allowed schools to delay its introduction of those classes until Spring 2021 due to the disruption brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

So for now, how and when schools decide to implement the curriculum is up to them.

'This isn't funny, or comical, or classroom banter'

"I don't presently think that schools are doing enough," Kate Parker, founder of the Schools Consent Project charity (SCP), told Insider.

"I think there needs to be much more of a deep dive into these issues because it's as important as maths or English. As far as I'm concerned, being able to safely navigate sexual encounters is hugely important."

Parker, who is also a full-time criminal barrister, founded SCP in 2014 with the mission of teaching 11- to 18 year-olds how to engage with issues surrounding consent and sexual assault in schools.

The charity's workshops, which are run by lawyers and law students, specifically highlight to students the legal definition of consent and also cover key section offenses, including sexting and revenge porn.

"We've realized there's not enough notice of the criminal law," Parker said.

"We see it with young people who breach it without realizing they're breaching it and the consequences can be enormous, they can be life-changing. It can affect young people long into their adult life."

Parker said the charity has seen a significant spike in interest over the last two years as more schools become aware of the prevalence of sexting and revenge porn.

"Perhaps lockdown and remote living is also going to see young people be on their phones even more, which might contribute to that," she said.

"I just think it's really important to be able to have an open conversation with young people to let them know that this isn't funny, or comical, or classroom banter. This is an offense that can leave many people scarred and traumatized."

Meanwhile, Cassidy is glad that her case was reported and dealt with. The boys who had been collecting images of the girls at their schools faced a two-week suspension, and one of them even apologized to her.

"It wasn't very sincere but I could move on from it," she said.

She has since said she's managed to turn the experience into something positive.

"Looking back, it seemed to be a turning point in life," she said. "I definitely felt like it was important for it to happen for me to be able to be the person I am today, even if it was such a horrible thing."

"It made me realize that there's more to life than high school," she added.

• Read more:
• A huge fake-nude Telegram operation shows the big threat posed by deepfakes is revenge porn, not disinformation
• Revenge porn cases rocketed over lockdown. Here are 5 ways to stay safe when sending intimate images online.
• 'The damage she caused was irreversible': 90% of male revenge porn victims are also blackmailed, but the police just don't care