Boys aged 11 message me saying ‘I want to s**g you’ – rape culture in schools is fuelled by porn, says Zara McDermott

SCHOOL may be touted as the best years of our lives, but for too many teenage girls it’s a living nightmare – and no one knows better than Zara McDermott.

The Love Island star was traumatised at 14 when a nude picture of her, which she initially sent to a lad under pressure, was circulated around her Essex school.

zara_mcdermott/InstagramZara McDermott gets messages from young boys asking for sex[/caption]

Social MediaZara’s long-term boyfriend Sam Thompson appears in the documentary[/caption]

Now, ahead of a new BBC Three documentary, Zara McDermott: Uncovering Rape Culture, she tells The Sun how sexual abuse coloured her whole school experience.

“Most of my school memories are of me being groped by a boy under the desk, in the school field or in the classroom,” she says.

“The revenge porn event was the most traumatic, but a lot of bad memories revolve around that physical abuse as well.

“I always thought I was unlucky with my school experience, and the boys in my year, but actually, it is happening in every school.

“When I was making this film, it dawned on me that pretty much every girl is going through this or knows someone who’s going through it.”

Even today, the reality star says boys as young as 11 message her online, asking her to send nudes or saying: “I want to s**g you.”

“They’re just chancing their luck, or being dared by friends, but it’s concerning that these young boys think it’s okay to send those messages,” she says. “If they think it’s okay to send it to me, what are they sending to their peers?”

The documentary – which airs tonight on BBC1 and is available on iPlayer – examines the extent of sexual harassment, assault and even rape among teenagers in the wake of the Everyone’s Invited movement, which has collected over 54,000 testimonies from victims over the last 17 months.

It also looks at the shocking prevalence of porn being viewed by boys as young as 11, and considers how that shapes the views of teenagers.

Attack by ‘freckly 15-year-old’

As The Sun previously revealed, Zara, 24, was the victim of an attempted rape – by a “freckly schoolboy” of around 15.

In the daylight attack four years ago, she was followed by the lad who pinned her against a wall and tried to pull her leggings off in her local park.

Zara was rescued by members of the public, but she says the experience left her shaken, shocked at how forceful the teenager had been, and worried that her attacker – who has never been caught – would prey on other girls.

“I was lucky to come away unscathed and my revenge porn experience had a lot more emotional impact,” she says.

“But it definitely made me change my behaviour. I think carefully about my route and never walk along the street without checking who’s behind me, because even in broad daylight, that boy managed to follow me for half a mile before assaulting me.

“It made me feel like prey and it makes you wonder what happens if a guy who is bigger and stronger tries the same? That stays with you.

“It also made me anxious about the younger victims that this boy could be a predator to, because often these crimes are gateway offences, and subsequent attacks will get worse.

“It got me thinking about what makes young boys feel this sense of entitlement over a young woman’s body? And where did that behaviour begin?”

Nude pressures brings back revenge porn hell

For the documentary, Zara talks to schoolgirls who have suffered abuse.

This includes Mary, who was left with severe bruising across her chest and internal injuries by a sexual assault, and was forced to attend the same school as her attacker, even after he was convicted.

Female pupils from a North London high school tell Zara they are constantly pressured for nudes and that one boy sent a picture of his privates to every girl in the year.

The girls’ experiences mirror Zara’s own. At 14, she had never even kissed a boy but was pressured into sending an explicit pic by a boy who told her: “It will make me like you more.”

The fallout after he shared the picture sent her into a spiral of self-loathing and depression, leaving her close to suicide.

She is still traumatised by the memory a decade later.

“The experiences I went through as a teenager were traumatic and definitely still affect me to this day,” she says.

“Hearing other girls talking about going through those pressures is shocking and I put myself in those girls’ shoes.

“It breaks my heart that it’s still going on. It brings it all back for me and makes me more determined to change as much as I can.”

In a moving interview, she also talks to Rachel Halliwell, whose daughter Semina took her own life at 12 after being pressured for nudes, allegedly raped and bullied for reporting it to the police.

Brave mum Rachel tells Zara: “Semina was in hospital a few days, in a coma. On the Saturday morning I held her hand and she left.

“You don’t think you’re going to lose a child. No parent should go through that.”

Zara says the heartbreaking interview “will stay with me forever”.

“I was incredibly touched by Semina’s mum and commend her bravery in every way,” she says.

“It’s devastating and shocking but Semina’s case is a tragic outcome of circumstances that young girls are faced with every single day.”

Kids stumble across porn as young as three

The link between porn and boys’ view of sex is also examined, with one girl telling Zara a male classmate had shown her friends an X-rated video and told them: “These are the positions you’re going to do.”

“It gives them unrealistic ideas of beauty, like being hairless, and being tiny but having big boobs and a big bum,” she adds.

The boys – who were reluctant to speak at first – admitted they had been watching porn from the ages of 11 and 12, and that the sexual violence they could easily access on their smartphones was “the only education on what sex is like”.

One lad admitted: “When boys watch porn they can misinterpret what it’s actually like. Not all girls are going to like to be thrown on the bed, and choked and stuff like that, and a boy could go into the room thinking a girl likes that.”

“Porn is so easily accessed and there’s almost no age verification on the sites,” says Zara.

“One of the boys was three years old when he stumbled across a porn website, after his mum put a kids’ film on for him and an ad for the site popped up at the side.

“So it’s not always what the kids want to watch, but what they are exposed to, and it is warping young people’s minds.

“Girls see it and think that is what they should do and what they should look like, which is unrealistic and boys take their idea of a first sexual encounter from a completely fake, scripted scenario.”

Zara’s long-term boyfriend Sam Thompson, 29, admits to accessing porn at 13 and says it would have been younger if he’d grown up with a smartphone.

“God help the kids today because they have everything at the touch of a button,” he tells The Sun.

“You’d have the mind of a saint to avoid it but people are inquisitive. Who knows what age I would have started looking at porn if I’d had it to hand.”

Zara was shocked to see some of the titles on popular site PornHub using deliberately violent language – and says the lack of robust age verification is astonishing.

A government pledge to bring in robust age verification legislation, as part of the new Online Harms bill, was dropped in December 2020 – despite a recent Middlesex University study which showed 53 per cent of 11-to-16-year-olds have seen explicit material and 94 per cent of them before they were 14.

“Porn is harmful to kids,” says Zara. “You have to show ID to get alcohol or to gamble, but you don’t have to show ID to watch violent, sometimes non- consensual pornography. How is that possible?”

Boys ‘confused’ by OnlyFans and sexy Tik Tok posts

Over recent years, there has been a groundswell of girls and women speaking out about sexual harassment and assault with online forums such as Everyone’s Invited and Screengrab Them – where school-age victims report abusive texts and online messages.

Both Zara and Sam applaud girls for speaking out but say that boys need help to understand how they can change too and it’s “vital” they are included in the conversation.

“At the moment there’s an uprising and women are finding their voice a lot more, calling out men and boys on their behaviour, which is amazing,” says Zara.

“But it’s also making boys recoil and not want to speak about it, because they’re worried about voicing their feelings and potentially getting it wrong, or being punished for it.

“They don’t know how to approach girls. These are adolescents, who are starting to find each other attractive and want to talk to each other about sex but they are not getting the help they need to understand it.”

Sam agrees boys are constantly bombarded with sexual images, which leaves them confused.

“You’ve got TikTok, for example, which sexualizes young women, and kids are seeing that from the age of eight or nine, and they now have to contend with OnlyFans,” he says.

“On the one hand, people are telling them the right thing – which Zara’s documentary does in a powerful way – and on the other hand, they have people peddling OnlyFans subscriptions, saying ‘pay this and you can watch everything you want and more’.

“How is a teenager going to navigate right and wrong when he’s bombarded with porn and OnlyFans?

“I would hate to be a young boy today. It’s a horrifically tough place to be a young woman, but it’s not easy for a young man either.”

Zara – whose last documentary on revenge porn was shown in schools – says more education around sex is needed and the conversations should start at primary level.

She also hopes her latest documentary will help parents discuss thorny issues with their kids.

“I want the programme to be a starting point for a conversation about sex and porn, so parents don’t feel awkward and uncomfortable,” she says.

“I just wish these kinds of films were around when I was a child, because it would have made me feel like I wasn’t alone and that the pressures I was under weren’t necessarily real,” she says.

“I really needed something like this at 14 – it would have saved me years of heartache.”

Zara McDermott: Uncovering Rape Culture is a BBC Three documentary which airs tonight at 10.35pm on BBC1 and is available on iPlayer

ITVZara suffered trauma as a teenager after a nude was shared[/caption]

BBCZara interviews abuse victims in the documentary[/caption]

Sam McDermott InstagramSam admitted watching porn from 13[/caption]