It was from one of Dan’s friends. I ignored his first few messages. Things got worse when Roxy realised that the older boy, Dan, had been showing her pictures around and his friends started messaging her for the same kind of photos But it seemed like there was so much dislike for me in her eyes, so I didn’t say anything. Sometimes I really did think about talking to Mum, because although I felt a buzz from the attention, the photos made me feel disgusting, too, and I wanted to tell her how I was messing up.
I bought a pack of lacy thongs from Primark, which I hid from Mum, and put them on when I took pictures. He asked me to do things - get down on my hands and knees, take off my bra, arch my back. Every time I went into the bathroom at home, I took a new one. I sent more and more pictures to Dan, mostly on Snapchat. If I hadn’t been told how ‘hot’ I was that evening, I couldn’t sleep. She seemed to find my presence even more irritating than usual. ‘Be smarter than that.’īut Roxy blanked me, and in the following weeks our relationship began to deteriorate. Roxy explains how she was too scared to tell her mother, in fear that her mum would hate her and be disappointed in her This one was handsome, but why did a 17-year-old want to text a 13-year-old girl? I told her he had ‘classic bad-boy’ written all over him.
She and her friends were beginning to dress in more overtly ‘sexy’ ways, but I didn’t think she had much experience with boys. She was giggly and gleeful, and I tried not to overreact. For me, it all started the day Roxy showed me a photo of a sixth-form boy she had been texting. At weekends we spent time as a family, lighting fires, watching Strictly and going on muddy walks. Gay says: For a while, Roxy was happy at her school. I pressed the button again and again and again. I covered my face in the mirror with my phone and took my top off. I rolled my knees in until a thigh gap appeared. If I said no, then why would he keep texting me? So I arched my back to make my stomach seem flatter. Sending photos was pretty common most people did it. I would be completely alone - my friends wouldn’t want to spend time with me. I was genuinely terrified that the idea I was frigid would spread around school. Rox ngl if you don’t send any im gonna hav to tell ppl that ur super frigid. The requests became demands and when I didn’t deliver. I’d had one boyfriend before - Joe, who was my age and very sweet - but we broke up when I started to receive more attention from older boys.ĭan, it turned out, liked me so much he wanted more photos. But I didn’t want to lose Dan’s attention. The morning after sending that first photo of myself in my underwear, I felt dirty.
We never dated - he only ever messaged me after 8pm - but I had always wanted to be liked, and the more the older boys paid attention to me, it seemed, the more the popular girls had time for me. The fact he’d started to text me had made me feel good. I was only 13 years old when I pressed send on the first explicit photograph I shared with Dan, a handsome and popular boy who was three school years above me. Roxy Says: Looking back, I wonder whether this was the moment my childhood ended. However, he soon started asking for her to send him explicit pictures of herself, threatening to spread malicious rumours about her if she did not Here, in a wake-up call to parents and schools alike, they take turns to describe their differing viewpoints - and the devastating toll the experience took on Roxy’s mental health.Ī 17-year-old boy started showing interest in Roxy and she was flattered. And yet, far from hiding from it, Gay and Roxy, now 19, have turned their experiences into a brave and heartbreaking new book. For example, it’s an offence for a child to make a sexual image of themselves - it’s also an offence to share and receive it, let alone coerce a child to take the picture in the first place. Quite apart from concerns over children exchanging sexual imagery, engaging in this kind of behaviour can constitute a criminal offence. Surveys show one in six children aged 13 and 14 has sent a nude picture of themselves, and an extraordinary 15per cent of 13-year-olds have been pressured to send such images. Roxy and her mother Gay (right) have now written a book together about their experience Roxy Longworth (left) was 13 when a boy 14 years older than her coerced her into sending explicit selfies to him, before sharing them around her school.