Bella Thorne in tears as she recalls sharing her own nude photos after hacker threatened to leak them
Warning: This article contains discussion of rape which some readers may find distressing.
Bella Throne emotionally opened up on the moment she decided to release her own private photos after being blackmailed by a hacker.
The former Disney Channel star appeared on The Call Her Daddy podcast, with host Alex Cooper, in which she recalled the 2019 incident.
Thorne, 28, revealed that the ordeal started off with a text from someone she didn't know, in which she was then sent a private photo, which she had never posted - and they kept coming.
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It was later revealed that British hacker Joseph O’Connor was behind the hacking.
The star, who was on a promotional tour for her book, The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray, which chronicles her personal struggles, at the time, showed her manager the messages.
"I don't know what to do," she told him. "My power was taken from me then, for so many years, and now he has this thing of me and he's taking it again. It felt like being re raped," Thorne said on the podcast.
"And also feeling like 'everything will end for you,' if he does this. Having someone else have that power and agency over your own body..."
Thorne, who was 21 at the time, said her manager saw her as a 'person and not a client,' and supported her decision to release the pictures herself.
As well as her own private pictures, Thorne was also getting send nudes of people she knew - to 'show his power'.
On coming to the decision of releasing the photos, Thorne told Cooper she felt that if she was going to 'lose her whole career' because of this man and his actions, 'I'll just do it'.
"It's the way I approach life. If you want to say, 'she's so sexual,' okay, then I'll be sexual. You want to do this to me, you want to take this from me? I'm going to take it instead," agreeing with Cooper that it was her way of 'taking control'.
Thorne made an 'honest Twitter post' at the time, as she emotionally recalled the reaction she got from trolls online.
“The worst part of that was people saying, 'You did this. You are faking it. You just want to show us your t*ts," she recalled, while holding back tears.
"'You want us so badly to see your private parts that that’s why you’re doing it. You want it.’ And that to me really broke me."
The Midnight Sun star then revealed she later got a call from the FBI, and the man was caught after a year and a half.
"They knew it was him from the writing," the Shake It Up told Cooper. "So if I had not posted those screenshots, they wouldn't have caught him. Or maybe they would have caught him later, but they wouldn't have had that direct source."
Thorne thanked the authorities on social media at the time, writing: “I want to thank the FBI for searching tirelessly for the person who made my life and others a living hell.”
Joseph James O’Connor arrested in southern Spain on charges related to the hacking of the Twitter accounts of over 130 people – including Kayne West, Joe Biden and Elon Musk.
In June 2023, he was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a wide array of cybercrime offenses by a U.S. federal judge.
Topics: Bella Thorne, Celebrity, Podcast
Kiesha Dosanjh