Natalie Brown, a 39-year-old woman from Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, was trying to find a recipe on the Food Network website when she made the shocking discovery.
As she typed in the letter ‘F’, her browser redirected her to a different website—Fetlife, a social networking platform catering to people with sexual fetishes.
To her horror, Natalie found a video of herself completely naked and engaged in a sexual act. She had no idea the footage even existed.
She later learned that her partner at the time had filmed the video without her knowledge.
She explained that she had been blindfolded during the recording, which her partner had requested, and that he uploaded the footage to Fetlife without her consent.
In Dartmouth Provincial Court, it was revealed that while Natalie’s face and upper body were not visible in the 12-second clip, her lower body was fully exposed and naked.
Her ex-partner, 43-year-old Conor Dolan, was charged in April last year with voyeurism and distributing intimate images without consent.
This arrangement avoided the need for a full trial, though the presiding judge noted that Dolan could have faced jail time if the case had gone to trial.
Instead, Dolan received a four-month conditional sentence on January 6, which means he is now under house arrest and has a criminal record.
The court heard that the video was filmed inside the couple’s home while Dolan held Natalie’s dog in his Fetlife profile picture.
The recording included her voice, which, combined with other details, made her reasonably identifiable, according to the judge.
Following this ordeal, Natalie has dedicated herself to raising awareness about online sexual abuse and the challenges of dealing with revenge porn.
She revealed how difficult it was to have the video removed from Fetlife, as the site claimed the content was Dolan’s property and that she couldn’t verify her identity in the footage.
He clarified: “In this case, we didn’t have that factor.”
The court also learned that the video had been uploaded two weeks before Natalie accidentally discovered it in September 2019.
Despite Dolan’s claims that he had deleted it, the video remained accessible online for four years.
However, just five months after claiming to deactivate his Fetlife account, Dolan reactivated it and kept the video online. He finally removed it on January 28, 2024.
In a statement read to the court, Dolan admitted that he had uploaded the video to attract other sexual partners, claiming it was ‘not about her.’
