STARING at her phone, Roxy Longworth felt sick to her stomach as she realised explicit photos of her were being circulated around the whole school.
Roxy was just 13 years old when she was coerced into at her school.
What happened next will .
Feeling – Roxy was flattered when she was bombarded with messages from a handsome, popular lad three years above her at her independent school.
At first she refused his request but following night after night of relentless messages telling her how hot she was, she wavered.
When the pushy 17-year-old boy finally started to accuse her of being frigid, Roxy relented.
Despite having heard warnings at school about the dangers of sharing racy images, Roxy knew she would not be the first girl to give in to coercion.
But Roxy's ‘admirer’ soon sent the image on to a friend who then started blackmailing Roxy into sending more images and before too long her pictures had been shared all over the school – where hundreds of fellow pupils were poring over them.
Roxy, now 22, said: “Sending the first images made me feel awful, but I was very insecure about myself at the time and was flattered by this boy’s attention.
“Then one day his friend sent me a text asking me to send him pictures.
“I ignored him but before long he sent me a picture he already had of me in my underwear.
“He said he would send it to his cousin who was in my year, so I agreed to send him some.”;
Horrifyingly, Roxy adds: “I later found out they were playing Top Trumps with my photos at a festival. It made me feel sick.”;
Having been successfully blackmailed, Roxy’s intimate images ended up being spread around her school – and worse was yet to come.
Not only was she trolled and tormented by other pupils, but the school staff punished Roxy by making her write an essay about what she had done wrong – while failing to punish the boys involved.
She said: “I already felt such shame and guilt and the school’s reaction compounded that feeling.”;
Suicidal thoughts
Knowing so many people had seen the pictures made Roxy feel such shame that for years she struggled to trust anyone.
She could not bear to look at her own reflection in a mirror and even saying the word ‘photograph' was traumatic.
She had panic attacks and started cutting herself and was eventually hospitalised after becoming suicidal.
In a recent TV interview on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Roxy said: “I started punishing myself by self-harming and my mental health completely spiralled, mostly because of the shame I think.
I was so ashamed I couldn't even look in the mirror
Roxy Longworth
“I stopped sleeping, started hearing voices, was hospitalised with a psychotic episode and spent the next several months on suicide watch.
“When I started speaking out about it, I was inundated with messages of people with similar but different experiences, but the common thread throughout it was this feeling of shame.
“I was like, ‘That is crazy that all these people are sat on their own feeling that'.”
Now Roxy, who went on to study neurosciences at University College, , is determined to turn her trauma into something positive.
She has set up a website where victims of similar ordeals can share their stories.
“It would have made so much difference to me at the time if I hadn’t felt so alone,”; she says.
“It was shame that made it possible for these boys to blackmail me.
“Many kids are frightened to tell their parents what is going on but if they can see they are not alone, that may change.
“Knowing I wasn’t alone could have made all the difference in what happened to me.
“I was impacted not just by the abuse at the time but also the years afterwards. Years that I wasted because, despite moving school, I found it difficult to trust anyone and strike up new friendships.
“I was so ashamed I couldn't even look in the mirror.”;
Asking for nudes
Roxy, who is now an , hopes to collect around 10,000 testimonials from victims and take them to the Government to help shape change “guided by what young people want”;.
She has spent the last year giving talks at and was stunned when a 12-year-old boy confided that he thought asking for nudes was the way to start a relationship.
First-hand accounts left on her website show the shocking extent to which sending explicit and nude images have infiltrated .
One young woman writes: “It became the norm that girls’ phones would be overloaded with nightly messages from various boys in my year, asking what underwear they were wearing, complimenting the way they looked around school and, eventually, inflating my ego so much that I felt like I owed them photos of me in my underwear.”;
Another pens: “When my friends and I were around 13 we started receiving unsolicited d*** pics from both random people and people we knew.
“We used to sit around and laugh at this, finding what we had been sent funny. I didn’t want my mum to ban me from social media, so it was easier not to tell anyone.”;
I want children to know that they are not alone
Roxy Longworth
Girls are not the only victims either.
One young lad tells how he was manipulated into sending nudes to a 21-year-old man he had met on the messaging channel Discord.
He writes: “At the time I didn’t understand that it was manipulation – he was threatening suicide if I didn’t. I felt so much shame that I couldn’t speak about it.”;
Roxy’s Behind Our Screens platform has been backed by the mother of murdered teenager .
Brianna, 16, was killed by classmates Scarlett Jenkinson and friend Eddie Rafcliffe, both now 16, in a premeditated attack in in 2023.
Esther Ghey wants a blanket ban on smartphones in all in , but Roxy says that risks “widening the gap between generations”;.
Roxy added: “I never thought I’d be one of those people who sends explicit pictures but it’s an easy trap to fall into when someone is giving you lots of attention.
“I want children to know that they are not alone.”;
Figures show that, between the ages of 14 and 15, the likelihood of a child sending a racy image more than doubles.
A Youthworks survey revealed that four per cent of children aged 13 have sent pictures of themselves compared to seven per cent aged 14 and 15.
Among those young people aged 13+ who shared nude or explicit images, 18 per cent said they were pressured or blackmailed into doing it.
The top reasons for engaging in the trend were given as being in a relationship or wanting to provoke a reaction.
- For more information log on to Behindourscreens.co.uk
