I was browsing recipes on my partner’s laptop when I saw a video that made my heart stop. It was only the start of a twisted nightmare…

Natalie Brown thought nothing of it when she grabbed her partner’s laptop to search the Food Network for recipes while preparing dinner at their apartment.  

But when she typed ‘f’ into the web browser to bring up the food site, an entirely different result appeared in the search bar: Fetlife.

She didn’t recognize the name, so with her spidey senses on high alert, she clicked on the website. Her jaw dropped as she saw it was filled with sexually-explicit images and reams of content about various kinks and fetishes.

Then she noticed the site was already logged into an account with a profile picture of a man she immediately recognized – and who was sitting just feet away from her on the couch.

‘I felt like my stomach was going to fall out of my throat,’ Natalie, 39, told DailyMail.com. ‘My heart was racing. I was sweating.’

The profile included her partner’s name, Conor Dolan, his location, nude photos of him and lists of ‘everything he was into that I had no idea about,’ she explained. His picture even featured the couple’s dog, Winston.

But as she scrolled down, she spotted something that made her blood run cold. There at the bottom of his profile was a video – and she was in it too.

Natalie had no idea then that this was just the beginning of what would be a years-long nightmare that would end up in the courts and leave her utterly destroyed. 

When she first made the discovery in September 2019, Natalie stared dumbstruck at the laptop for what seemed like forever.

The man sitting across from her had asked her father for his blessing to marry her just a few months earlier and was fondly known by her family as ‘Uncle Conor’.

It was clear he had set up the account, and his secret had been outed simply because the internet browser had auto-populated his most recent search history.

The video he had posted was of a sexual act between the two of them. The camera was mostly angled at him and her face wasn’t visible. 

But Natalie recognized her body. ‘For a minute, I was like, that is definitely me. That is our apartment. That is my bed. That is my body,’ she recalled.

In that moment she had a flashback of Conor asking to blindfold her while they were being intimate the previous summer. She’d had no idea he was filming her.

After she composed herself enough to confront him, Conor quickly admitted to posting the video and creating the account. 

He apologized profusely as she wept and claimed the footage was intended not to harm her but to showcase his skills in the bedroom to potential partners.

Natalie had caught him on dating apps before, but the couple were trying to work through the issues in the relationship.

She felt completely betrayed and violated, and was terrified about who might have seen the video.

Natalie described the website as if you ‘took a pornography site and a dating app and Facebook and put them in a blender’.

‘It connects you with local people, and local people see your profile,’ she explained.

At the time, the couple were living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Back then, the Canadian city boasted around 440,000 residents and had a ‘smaller town’ vibe.

‘So I’m like, who has seen it, has my neighbor seen it, have my coworkers seen it?,’ she told DailyMail.com.

‘Is this what they think I’m into?’ she continued. ‘Who has seen my body and judged it or, the more disturbing part is, who has pleasured themselves to my body without my consent?’

Despite her devastation, Natalie eventually agreed to stand by him.

Conor had apologized repeatedly, promised to take the video down and said he would never use the website again.

‘He told me he loved me. He told me he was sorry. He was repentant. He didn’t want me to leave. He kind of begged me to stay,’ she said. ‘He was crying. He was upset.’

Eventually Conor also agreed to go to therapy, with Natalie even offering to accompany him to some of the sessions.

‘This was framed to me as a mental health problem, and that he needed help,’ she explained. ‘The way it was told to me is that he had a pornography addiction and that this was an extension of that.’

‘I loved this man, and we were together for a long time,’ she continued. 

‘This was not a flash in the pan. I wanted him to get better. I wanted to be supportive. I am very passionate about mental health advocacy. I understand what that’s like, and men have mental health issues, too, and that is highly underreported here.’

But on Christmas Eve she noticed a flurry of alerts on his phone and discovered he was still talking to other women.

At that point they decided to end their relationship, agreeing to remain friends and share custody of their dog.

‘I was convinced by him, by everybody else, that this was an issue with his mental health, and I wanted the best for him in spite of whatever he did to me,’ she said. ‘I forgave him.’

But the nightmare was far from over. 

Around four years later, a male friend complained to her that he had found his partner using the website Fetlife without his knowledge.

Shocked to discover someone else was going through what she had, Natalie shared her own story.

Her concerned friend, an IT consultant, asked if she had checked to see if the video had definitely been removed.

Natalie explained that she had initially contacted Fetlife to ensure the video was deleted but was informed that, as the content belonged to Conor, there was little they could do since her face was not ‘identifiable’. 

They told her she would need to submit a voice clip to see if it matched what could be heard in the video, but she felt too ashamed and just wanted to forget all about it. DailyMail.com has contacted Felife for comment.

At the time, Natalie had believed Conor when he said he’d taken down the video. But now she realized she should check again.

‘My heart sank,’ Natalie recalled.

She grabbed her laptop while still at her friend’s house and pulled up the site.

‘Sure enough, his profile was there with his updated age and everything intact – the same pictures were there, and my video was there,’ she said. ‘I actually physically threw up.’

At that point, all thoughts of friendship were over. She contacted a lawyer friend for advice and then reported him to the police.

It turned out that Conor had reactivated his account in February 2020. The video of Natalie had been publicly viewable for four years.

It took the intervention of CyberScan, a division of Canada’s Department of Justice which works with victims of cyberbullying and intimate image cases, for the video to finally by removed from Fetlife. 

But for Natalie, it was not enough.

Unable to trust that the video had definitely been removed from the internet and would not resurface, she decided to prosecute him in order to protect herself.

Under Canadian law, Conor was charged with the criminal offences of voyeurism and the publication or distribution of intimate images without consent.

Although he initially pleaded not guilty to both charges, he eventually took a deal in which he pleaded guilty to the latter in return for the voyeurism charge being dropped.

This meant he would receive a four-month conditional sentence, or house arrest, and a criminal conviction on his record.

He was also barred from contacting Natalie ever again.

Natalie has since chosen to share her story publicly to help raise awareness.

‘There are so many women who will have to go through this on some level,’ she told DailyMail.com.

‘I have to do this, not only for me, but for those who come after me, because we need more women to come forward with cases like this so that there is precedent.

‘There are so many women who don’t have a voice.’

She hopes that by going through the justice system it will ensure men are held accountable for their actions and create a historical record that will help push for penalties to become tougher.

In the United States, 48 states and Washington DC have legislation criminalizing the nonconsensual sharing of images, commonly known as ‘revenge porn.’

Victims can also take federal action thanks to a provision in the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022.

A first offense usually becomes a misdemeanor but repeat crimes often result in felony charges, which can lead to sentences of up to five years.

Natalie’s case was not technically classed as ‘revenge porn’ because there was no proven intent to harm, according to the prosecution.

This remains baffling to her, as his actions so clearly hurt her.

‘I have gone through absolute hell,’ she said. ‘I have been at the bottom, and I am still picking myself up. I’m still having panic and anxiety.

‘My body has been on display for strangers to judge, comment on and enjoy for four years. My consent, my privacy and my sense of safety had been stolen from me, and it was devastating – emotionally, psychologically.

‘I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t trust. I had to take a lot of time off of work, which has affected my career progression. It affected my relationships. I still am now paranoid, and I’ve been in therapy working to get over these issues.’

‘It just destroyed me in every possible way,’ she continued.

‘He took advantage of me when I was most vulnerable. You are vulnerable when you are in an intimate act with somebody who you love. I trusted him and he violated that trust.’

For now, Natalie is determined to use her experience to help others.

‘I don’t want my suffering to be for nothing. I’ve had people say, ‘well, why didn’t you just keep it quiet?’ or ‘you’re looking for attention,’’ she said.

‘That is Victim Blaming 101. I am doing this because every woman needs to have a voice, and collectively, if we bring our voices together, they are louder, they are stronger, and they can make change.’

When reached by DailyMail.com, Dolan said: ‘I wish her the best in life and I’d rather not comment on the case specifically.’