Sunday 27 November 2022 07:53 AM Personal trainer photographed topless without her consent on a Sydney beach trends now
A personal trainer having a sneaky topless photo of her taken without her consent as she sunbathed on the beach will 'haunt her forever'.
Lily Cook was secretly snapped on a beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs with her sister on November 12 and only learned about it hours later.
When she tried to complain to the police, no charges were laid because it is not a crime to photograph people in public.
Ms Cook said finding out the photo was shared on group chats 'had a profoundly detrimental effect upon her mental health'.
'It is a moment in my life that will haunt me forever,' she said, vowing to speak out after other women told her the same thing happened to them.
Lily Cook, from Sydney, (pictured) was secretly photographed while sunbaking topless on a Sydney beach earlier this month
'The capture and distribution of [an] explicit image of a woman without her knowledge or consent is both abhorrent and illegal. I am standing up to this issue.'
Ms Cook said she saw three men, two of which she knew socially and had many mutual friends with, at the beach when she arrived and they were later joined by their girlfriends.
She always tanned topless, but didn't feel comfortable doing so with them around and so waited until they were leaving.
The fitness instructor received a message from a friend later that night asking if she had been topless at the beach, followed by a 'close up' photo of her laying on the sand.
'The person who sent me the photo confirmed who sent him the photo,' she wrote, on Instagram detailing the her horrifying experience.
'This is when I realised a photo had been taken of me without my consent and had further been distributed.'
Ms Cook contacted the men and their girlfriends in a group message and they claimed she was accidentally caught in a wider landscape photo posted to an Instagram story by one of their friends.
She claimed this turned out to be a lie, as in that image both she and her sister were lying down, and in the photo that was shared her sister was sitting up
'Due to the quality of the image and the angle, it was clear one of the males had snuck closer to me to get a close-up of me topless,' she wrote.
The images covertly taken of Ms Cook, who gave Daily Mail Australia permission to publish them. The differences between the two images unravelled a fake story she was told claiming she was accidentally caught in a wider landscape shot
Ms Cook said a man finally owned up to taking the photo off the phone of the man who took it, and then sent it to two friends who distributed it further.
But the man refused to make a statement to police.
'I can't help but think of how different this whole process would be if they had the strength and dignity to own their actions and how it can impact a woman,'
