She was searching online for a recipe. She found a video of herself engaged in a sexual act

WARNING: This story contains details of intimate partner violence and may affect those who have experienced​ ​​​it or know someone who has.

Natalie Brown sat down one day to search the Food Network for a recipe. But another website starting with "F" popped up immediately — Fetlife, a Canadian social networking site for people interested in fetishism — and on it, she found a video she didn't know existed of herself engaged in a sexual act. 

"I was so humiliated. I felt stupid, I felt embarrassed, I felt scared," Brown said during a recent interview at her Halifax apartment. 

Brown, 39, said she later learned her partner had taken the video while she was blindfolded — at his request — and then shared it on Fetlife. 

Brown's now-former partner, Conor Dolan, was charged in April 2024 with voyeurism and the distribution of intimate images without consent. He initially pleaded not guilty in Dartmouth Provincial Court.

Ultimately, the prosecution dropped the voyeurism charge in exchange for a guilty plea on the distribution charge, avoiding Brown having to testify in a trial. On Jan. 6, following a joint recommendation from the Crown and the defence, Dolan received a four-month conditional sentence, commonly known as house arrest. He will have a criminal record. 

Emboldened by the conviction and motivated by a recent rash of killings in Nova Scotia — police say six women have been slain by their partners in just the last three months as a result of intimate partner violence — Brown, 39, asked the court to lift a publication ban protecting her identity so she could raise awareness of intimate partner violence.

She also wants people to know about the challenges she faced getting the intimate images of herself removed from the internet. 

Crown attorney Paul Niefer, who prosecuted the case against Dolan, said in an interview that incarceration is usually reserved for cases that involve "revenge porn," where someone is sharing the images with the intent to harm the victim. 

"In this case, we didn't have that factor," he said. 

Dolan, who has no prior record, declined an interview request, but when asked by the court if there was anything he would like to say, he said he was "tremendously sorry." 

While delivering the sentence, Justice Tim Daley told Dolan, 43, if the case had gone to trial he might have been facing jail time. 

"This was an act of intimate partner online sexual abuse. No question of it. It constituted a massive loss of privacy," Daley said.  

According to an agreed statement of facts before the court, Brown's face and upper body were not visible in the 12-second video, but her lower body was entirely nude. The video was taken in the home they shared and Dolan was holding her dog in the profile picture on the account. Her voice is also audible. The judge said she was identifiable.