What happened when Steph Claire Smith's intimate photo was shared is awful. But it's not surprising.

Steph Claire Smith has shared a disturbing experience she had at high school with slut-shaming and image-based abuse.

In an episode of KickPod, Steph opened up about a time a boy at school shared intimate photos of her around her class. She was just 16 years old.

“I remember very clearly walking into school and knowing that it had been shared around the night before,” Steph told her co-host Laura Henshaw. 

“Girls wouldn’t talk to me, other than obviously my friends were fine, but girls wouldn’t talk to me. Everyone was just looking at me. Guys would just make comments like ‘Oh, nice photo.’ They're f**king teenagers, they just don’t understand how that feels.”

Steph went on to say she was made to feel ashamed for sending an intimate photo to a person who wasn't her boyfriend. “I wasn’t dating this person that I sent photos to. And they were like, why would you? Why would you do that? That’s so dumb. Like how dumb are you?”

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A post shared by Stephanie Miller (@stephclairesmith)

Meanwhile, the boy who shared a photo of an underage girl without consent was treated differently. “He was f**king championed. He was a legend. It was so bad,” she reflected.

“The funny thing is, because of how I feel about that sort of stuff now, and I don’t believe there should be any shame around it, I don’t have any regrets or feel bad about it now. Also if ever any of those pictures were to resurface, I was underage. So like, anyone who has those photos, like you’re pretty f**ked up by now. We’re adults and like, I was literally 16.”

The law prohibits anyone from using their mobile phone or computer to send, take or download nude or sexual images of anyone under 18, which is considered child abuse material.

A 2017 survey by the eSafety Commission found that 15 per cent of girls aged 15 to 17 had reported having a nude or sexual image posted online without their consent.

Steph spoke further about the traumatic memory on Instagram. "Of course, I felt ashamed. Of course, I was embarrassed," Steph wrote in a post. 

"Of course, I felt like an idiot and felt deserving of the judgment I got from others, getting called a slut, attention seeker, or the rude remarks from other guys… How familiar is this story to you? It may not have been you who it happened to, but sadly I’m sure you knew of someone. And how did you judge them for it?

"Why do we blame the woman in this situation, each and every time? The one-sided shaming is not okay." 

Steph's vulnerable admission has been praised by her followers on Instagram. 

"Thank you for being so brave in sharing your story Steph! You’re helping so many people by doing so as unfortunately this has happened to far too many people, and they’re left feeling shameful and their mental health impacted," one commenter wrote.

Another added, "So many girls in my high school it happened to and the eyes were never on the boy that shared it."

Feature image: Instagram/@stephclairesmith.