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Lisa Jeynes Big Brother 4 speaks to Act Against Bullying about how cyberbullying nearly drove her to suicide and her wish to help child victims as a result.
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Lisa Jeynes:
cyberbullied |
Lisa Jeynes was introduced as a contestant on day 37 of Big Brother 4 in 2003 in an effort to increase a slump in the ratings. For two days prior she was kept in isolation and unable to view television, newspapers or receive any information on what was happening in the House. During that period a national newspaper article ran a story speculating on the next contestant being a sex-change. Just before entering the House one of the shows executives spoke to Lisa. ‘Do me a favour and when you go in say ‘I’ve must have balls to be here’.
‘What started off as a dream come true to be one of the lucky thousands to walk through the famous Big Brother doors soon turned into a nightmare’ she told Louise Burfitt-Dons.
Very quickly Lisa was excluded from the crowd. On reflection she thinks that the Big Brother House was expecting a transvestite to walk through the doors. ‘My silly throw away comment fed the speculation.’
By the time she left the House she had been cast in a role by the international media. ‘You can’t imagine what it is like to be spoken about like that particularly when there is not a shred of truth about it. It was almost surreal. Headlines were carrying the story of sex-change Lisa and when I emerged from the House there were billboards saying ‘Lisa—too ugly to be a man.’
‘Internet sites discussing the show had been constantly referring to me as ‘the ugly one’ or ‘the mannish looking one’.
‘I even received a text message from someone threatening to rape and kill me.’
Lisa sunk into depression. ‘ had suffered bullying as a child but this time it was on a far bigger scale. Newspapers overseas were continuing with the headlines and feeding the story. I wondered where it would stop.’
‘I had always been confident in my looks but now I wanted to change everything. I hated how I was.’
‘For three years I experimented with cosmetic surgery. Everything the public had criticised could be changed. I even allowed the work to be televised. It was as if I was saying ‘This is what I am doing for you. Now will you like me?’
The coverage of Lisa’s surgical exploits only served to fuel the speculation. ‘People would come up to me in the street and say ‘nice surgery’ but they were still referring to the sex change myth that the internet sites had developed. She dated a stream of high profile men. ‘Subconsciously I was probably trying to prove my femininity to the media’ but this gave the internet sites more ammunition to brand her a publicity seeker and the cyber abuse began again.’
‘You can’t even defend yourself because you don’t know how to. People were saying ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire.’
‘It has been like living through hell.’