Jacqueline Carey KC, who opened the prosecution case, said: “In August 2020, prosecutor Georgia Harrison met her ex-boyfriend Stephen Bear.
“They had lunch and a drink and ended up back at his house in Loughton.
“They had consensual intercourse in his yard.
“What she didn’t know, but he did, was that Bear had CCTV cameras in his yard showing them having sex.”
Later that day, Bear told Ms. Harrison and showed her the footage, the court heard.
“She told him never to send it to anyone and made it clear how upset she would be if he did,” Ms Carey said.
She said Bear sent the footage to someone on WhatsApp that night “despite knowing how upset she would be if the footage got out”.
‘Sell the images to get money’
Ms Carey said Bear later uploaded the footage “himself or had it uploaded to OnlyFans and benefited financially”.
Ms. Carey added: “The defendant essentially sold the footage to make money.”
Ms Carey said Bear’s OnlyFans account opened in October 2020, closed in December 2020 and had 1,061 subscribers, with 273 people paying $9.99 (£8.15) to view Bear and Ms Harrison’s footage.
She said Bear was arrested at Heathrow Airport on his way back from Dubai on January 15, 2021, but the phone he used in Dubai was “never recovered”.
Ms Harrison, testifying from behind the scenes, said she had sex in Bear’s yard, but had “absolutely no idea I was on camera during the time we had sex”.
She said Bear later told her that the pair may have been “accidentally” recorded on CCTV and she asked to see the footage.
“I was really drunk and I knew I’d want to know what was out there in the morning,” she said.
Ms Harrison said she told Bear it was going to be “really bad, not only change my life, but yours too” if the footage came out.
‘Completely ruining my life’
“He acted like I was really on edge about something that was never going to come out,” she said. “It wasn’t until later that night when I thought I saw him send it to someone that I thought this was pretty serious.”
She said she “grabbed” Bear’s phone when she saw him text it over WhatsApp.
Ms Harrison said Bear told her the person on WhatsApp would not have forwarded the footage and “he reversed it, said he deleted it and said he wouldn’t send it to anyone else”.
“I told him it would completely ruin my life and his career and if he sends it to anyone it’s revenge porn and you can go to jail for revenge porn,” she said.
Ms Harrison said she was told weeks later that the footage was online and that after enlisting the help of an “ethical hacker” she “discovered it came from OnlyFans”.
Ms Harrison told the court that her mother, who was her manager at the time, subscribed to Bear’s OnlyFans account and found a message dated 8 November 2020 with a screenshot of the footage that read: “Here’s a little preview. I will drop this video tonight.
She said she sent the screenshot to police, adding: “To actually make money from it – it’s absurd.”
The trial, which is expected to take at least four days, continues.