Teacher's Eight-Year Nightmare After Colleague Created Deepfake Porn
For Kirsty Pellant, the ordeal began with unsettling friend requests on Facebook and inappropriate messages from strangers. However, it was a cryptic Valentine's card that truly bewildered her. The card read, 'Hiya Kirsty, so nice that we have got in touch. Look forward to meeting you soon.' Kirsty, then head of safeguarding at a Church of England primary school, was left racking her brains to identify the sender.
Shocking Discovery of Doctored Images
When her secret admirer revealed his interest stemmed from explicit online images, Kirsty's curiosity turned to shocked disbelief. The 45-year-old soon discovered someone was posting photographs from her Facebook page on porn and escort websites. The pictures had been doctored to create 'deep fake' pornography, digitally splicing innocent photos with sexual ones from elsewhere.
More distressingly, the accompanying captions included Kirsty's full name and location, describing her with unsavoury labels like 'S****y Teacher' and falsely claiming she offered sexual services. This discovery marked the beginning of an eight-year nightmare, culminating in January 2025 when former teaching colleague Jonathan Bates was jailed for posting the images.
Widespread Campaign of Harassment
Multiple online accounts appeared to provide first-person details of Kirsty's supposed exploits, including group sex in a local pub. Her life became a constant cycle of monitoring websites and attempting to remove offensive material. It later emerged Bates had created hundreds of fake porn and escort profiles using photos of workmates, acquaintances, complete strangers, and even his own wife.
Following apparent police failures, Bates was only brought to justice when some of his victims connected the dots to identify him as their tormentor. The extraordinary story is told in full in Faked: Hunting my Online Predator, an ITV documentary airing Sunday night featuring Kirsty and three other victims reliving their ordeals.
Alarming Statistics and Normalisation
The case serves as a stark warning to women everywhere, with indications this new form of criminality is not only out of control but rapidly becoming normalised. Research indicates a staggering 1,780 per cent increase in online deepfakes between 2019 and 2024. Alarmingly, the National Police Chiefs' Council recently suggested one in four people feel neutral about or see nothing wrong with creating and sharing sexual deepfakes without consent.
Victims' Harrowing Experiences
Kirsty initially received the Valentine's card at her Canterbury home in February 2017 from a man calling himself 'George' who had seen her doctored images on porn site xHamster. When she googled herself, she found 'so much nastiness' including profiles describing her as a porn star with fabricated sexual fantasies. 'I just became a shell of my former self,' she recalls.
Three hundred miles away in Cornwall, mother-of-two Donna King, 49, endured a similar ordeal from January 2020. She discovered manipulated photos from her Facebook account on Pinterest and xHamster, with her postcode included on escort advertisements. 'There was just loads and loads of websites,' she explains.
Unmasking the Perpetrator
Donna eventually connected with another victim through social media, and together they identified Jonathan Bates as their common Facebook contact. Police searching Bates' home found nine USB sticks containing photos of hundreds of women, including names and addresses taken from a hospital where he worked as a medical records clerk. He had even posted images of his sleeping naked wife and videos of them having sex.
Legal Consequences and Ongoing Impact
Former paratrooper Bates, who served 15 years in the military before retraining as a teacher, admitted four charges of stalking by creating fake online accounts and one charge of disclosing private sexual photographs with intent. He received a five-year jail sentence and a ten-year ban from contacting his victims. Judge Simon Carr told him, 'You appear to have gained pleasure from the humiliation and terrorising of these women. The effect upon them has been utterly devastating.'
No firm motive has been established, with some victims seemingly picked at random. One woman targeted, Hayley from Southend, says, 'I had no links with this man. He doesn't know me. I do not know him.' Bates' ex-wife, who had to hand over a £62,000 settlement in their divorce, says he has never apologised and questions his remorse.
Calls for Stronger Protections
Revenge Porn Helpline chief Sophie Mortimer highlights the ongoing challenge: 'The biggest problem that we have here is around the takedown of this sort of content. The sharing of an intimate image without consent is illegal - but the image itself isn't.' She calls for government intervention to provide better tools for removing and blocking such content.
With pornographic fakery already ubiquitous and AI threatening exponential increases in victims, Kirsty reflects on her stolen years: 'Jon Bates took away many years I won't ever get back - my reputation, my dignity. For another human being to do that to you is just despicable.' The documentary Faked, Hunting my Online Predator airs on ITV, Sunday March 8 at 10.20pm.
