Chapter 21 Iris
Iris
THEN
Revenge porn. That’s what everyone at school was saying it was.
Iris hadn’t been into school since that day, three weeks ago.
She hadn’t been on social media either. But Millie came round every now and then and brought her up to speed.
Millie probably gave her a watered-down version of the fallout. That suited Iris.
Millie also told her that the class teachers in registration had warned the pupils that anyone found to have shared inappropriate material would face disciplinary action.
The headmaster and deputy head pastoral had banged on about it in assembly too, apparently.
All the parents had been sent an email saying the same thing – Iris already knew this because both Mum and Dad had received it.
Class teachers had been checking pupils’ phones, but because of the warnings, Iris supposed anyone with half a brain would have deleted her video by now.
Or stocked it in the Cloud or something.
Revenge porn. Two words that made sense, but at the same time cast confusion over the whole thing.
Iris had been bugged about that term since PC Quinlan had suggested contacting the Revenge Porn helpline.
She’d put up with a lot of Josh’s shit. What had she done that made him hate her so much?
That had made him want to seek revenge? But even as those questions writhed around in her head, she sort of got it.
Josh had taken their break-up badly. She used to think he was way out of her league and knew this was also his thinking.
He felt he was too good for her. Entitled.
And so he was really pissed when she dumped him.
Josh held grudges. He was a vengeful person.
So that was why. A more puzzling question was why now?
They’d split up, like, weeks ago. Two months ago, actually.
Was it a case of serving a dish cold? Or was there more to it?
Mum had made an appointment with a counsellor Jo knew personally. Iris didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened. She was deliberately staying off school and staying off social media and doing her best to bury her head in the sand. But her parents insisted.
‘How did it go?’ Mum asked as they drove home from her first session.
‘Fine,’ Iris said.
Iris hadn’t been much more talkative in her session with the counsellor, Melanie, to be honest. She’d just sat there feeling sick, stupid and sad. And above all, ashamed. So she’d left the talking up to Melanie, who said a couple of things that made Iris sit up and listen.
The first thing was that abuse was more insidious when it was psychological rather than physical.
Iris thought she knew the meaning of that word, but she’d google it when she got home, just to check.
It wasn’t really the word ‘insidious’ that got her, though.
It was the word ‘abuse’. Had Josh been abusing her while she was actually going out with him?
Or had that only come afterwards? She needed to think about that.
The other thing was about revenge porn. ‘I tend to avoid the term “revenge porn”,’ the counsellor said gently.
‘I think it puts too much emphasis on why the perpetrator did what he did and not enough emphasis on the harm it causes the victim-survivor on the receiving end of it. The focus has to be on you.’ Iris could see the logic in that.
‘In addition,’ Melanie continued, ‘not all perpetrators are motivated by revenge, or not solely by revenge, anyway.’
There was a lot to work through in all of that.
Terms that Iris needed to get her head round if she was going to be able to process it.
Josh was a ‘perpetrator’. She was a ‘victim-survivor’.
Or she would be if she got through this.
Privately, she had her doubts about her ability – or even her will – to do that.
‘What do you call it then?’ Iris asked.
‘Personally, I prefer the term “image-based sexual abuse”,’ Melanie said, ‘but it’s a bit of a mouthful. ‘Or “intimate-image abuse”. But we can call it whatever you like.’
Iris nodded. She could relate to Melanie’s expressions more than to the term ‘revenge porn’, even if she thought Josh was mainly motivated by revenge.
Plus, if Josh was taking revenge, it made it sound like she’d done something wrong, like she’d wronged him somehow.
Also, Iris didn’t like to think of the video of her as ‘porn’.
Technically, it probably was pornographic, but that hadn’t been her intention.
And she hadn’t given her consent for the video to be shared for other people to ogle at.
‘Cyber sexual abuse,’ Iris said. She thought she’d heard or read that somewhere before.
It was also a bit of a mouthful, but that was exactly what she was going through.
She felt as if she’d been sexually abused.
She felt dirty, she was hurting, she’d been exploited without her consent.
Dehumanized. Humiliated. Exposed. Yeah, that was what she wanted to call it.
Iris could avoid all the pupils at South Lydacombe, apart from Millie, of course, but there was no getting away from the problem.
For one thing, she couldn’t stop thinking about the video.
Plus, the whole issue had infected her home life, too.
Olly, who had gone back after his week’s suspension, had to face the mess Iris had left in her wake.
He dragged his heels in the mornings and came home at the end of the day unhappy and angry.
Iris imagined pupils whispering things about her without caring much if he heard or not.
In her absence, he’d be their scapegoat.
Iris also overheard an argument between Mum and Daniel. She couldn’t help eavesdropping. It wasn’t hard. They were shouting.
‘How can she have been so stupid?’ Daniel yelled.
Iris asked herself that same question many times a day.
‘Hey! That’s not fair! She didn’t know Joshua was going to disseminate the video. You should be asking why he shared something private with the whole school, not why my daughter shared an intimate video with her boyfriend.’
‘It’s not just with the school, though, is it? I received it via a messaging app from a concerned co-worker. Everyone at work knows about it. It’s all over social media, too. It has racked up thousands of views, apparently. It’s so embarrassing, Carla.’
Iris’s stomach flipped. Thousands of views? The video had gone viral. Everyone she knew must have watched it. As well as a whole load of people she didn’t know. She cringed with mortification.
‘If your bloody co-worker had truly been concerned, they might have told you about it, but they certainly wouldn’t have sent it to you,’ Mum hissed. ‘What they did was illegal.’
‘And what Iris did wasn’t?’
‘For fuck’s sake, Daniel! Iris has done nothing wrong. It’s not about what she did. It’s about what happened to her!’
Did Mum really believe that? Iris couldn’t be sure.
Her mum always stuck up for her and Olly when Daniel criticized them for something.
Iris hardly ever heard her swear, though.
And certainly not the F-word. Daniel and Mum were probably arguing about this a lot – the same argument, or variants of it, over and over again – just being more discreet about it most of the time.
Iris spent as much time as possible at Dad’s.
He was really supportive and he didn’t judge her or give her the impression her stupidity had impacted his life, too.
At Mayflower Farm – Dad’s place – she didn’t have to listen to that dreadful opera singing Mum played all the time.
And, more importantly, she didn’t have to feel Daniel’s judging eyes on her or look at him and wonder if he’d watched the video when his colleague sent it to him.
But she was alone during the day, whereas at Crooked Oak Cottage, Mum worked from home, which provided a comforting presence.
Mum wanted her to go back to school after Christmas. Iris knew she’d have to face the music one day, but she wasn’t ready yet. And although she hoped things would calm down over the holidays, she wasn’t optimistic.
‘The longer you put it off, the harder it will be,’ Mum said.
She was probably right. Iris felt lonely, like a recluse, whether she stayed at Mum’s or Dad’s.
She only went out for walks with Mum and for her sessions with Melanie.
She’d become really isolated. Melanie was right, too.
Josh hadn’t been motivated solely by revenge.
Iris remembered how he’d cut her off from her friends when they’d been dating.
He’d wanted her all to himself. Now he couldn’t have her.
But he could still see to it that no one else could.
He could make sure she was ostracized – another of Melanie’s words.
Even though they’d split up ages ago, he was still able to degrade her.
No, this wasn’t just about revenge. It was about control.
Josh was still pulling the strings, still dictating her emotions.
It was like he could still read her thoughts after all this time, because just when she was thinking this, he sent her a text. She’d blocked his number, like, a month ago, but it came in anonymously, with a six-digit code instead of a contact number. No doubt about it, though – it was from Josh.
It wasn’t me. Someone must have got hold of the vid in my phone. Maybe they even sent it from my phone. I turned the page a long time ago and I have a new gf now. I don’t wish you any harm, only the best.
J x
For a split second, she almost believed him. Then she snapped round. She might have believed his lies when they were dating. But that was over. This denial, this refusal to take responsibility for what he’d done, was gaslighting.
Iris showed the text message to Dad.
‘“I don’t wish you any harm” my arse. He’s trying to cover all the bases, the little bastard,’ Dad commented. ‘PC Quinlan said we have to be able to prove not only that Josh disclosed the video, but also that he intended to cause the victim – you – distress.’
‘Yeah,’ Iris said.
‘Roly said the same thing. We can’t prosecute unless we can prove that intent to cause distress. Although he did say cybercrime wasn’t his domain,’ Dad added.
Iris wasn’t convinced this was cybercrime.
She’d looked it up. Unless you considered her video to be child pornography.
Whatever. Even if Ian wasn’t an expert on this, Iris knew Dad had been talking to him about what had happened.
Not because Ian was a police officer, but because her dad needed his best friend’s advice.
But it was the first time anyone had mentioned the possibility of prosecuting out loud to her.
This was obviously why the police had told them to gather their own evidence, but the idea itself – the process of prosecuting Josh and everything that would entail – hadn’t really sunk in.
She hadn’t thought it through until now.
Iris couldn’t face her classmates; she could barely bring herself to utter two sentences in therapy.
There was no way she could face up to a court case.
Anyway, Josh would deny sharing the video, just as he’d denied it in his text.
She wouldn’t stand a chance of winning. Iris just wanted it all to go away.
But maybe this would never completely go away.