'My ex-boyfriend sent naked photographs of me to my colleagues'

A few weeks ago, I was reading a British newspaper at the breakfast table, when an article caught my eye. It said that in the next UK parliament the Domestic Violence Bill will be strengthened to include technological abuses. Revenge porn had already been criminalised, but this new bill would be even more comprehensive.

My stomach knotted up, as it always does when I come across articles like this, and horrible memories of my own revenge- porn experience in my 20s came flooding back.

It started on a work trip to Spain when I met Antoni*. He had tousled black hair, olive skin, and was incredibly charming. At the time I was in a relationship with a long-term boyfriend I'd grown out of, and shortly afterwards I broke up with him and took the plunge, moving to Spain to be with Antoni. But after the first few blissful weeks, Antoni changed.

He began trying to control what I wore, choosing which colours suited me best. (Bizarrely he loved bright orange.) Then the jealousy began; he read my emails, tried to tell me which friends to stay in touch with and had a violent temper. Within 10 months, I'd lost my confidence and a stone in weight. With my friends' help, I broke it off and returned to the UK, putting the nightmare behind me.

At first I thought little of the silent late-night phone calls and weird tech glitch on my business website. When friends received strange messages from me, I assumed a computer bug was to blame. But one day I was out for lunch when a long-standing client called and said, 'I think you'd better check your emails. Right now.'

Antoni had sent me an email at 6am containing a naked photograph of me that I didn't know he had taken. In it, I was sleeping in his apartment, mouth wide open, hair messy and limbs splayed. Someone had written comments on the edges in a childlike font: "He he – small tits!!" "Thinks her ass is nice." "Hairy bikini line, does she ever clean it?" The email subject line read: "SAY YOU COME BACK TO ME OR I'LL SEND THIS TO EVERYONE!!"

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In the seven intervening hours Antoni had come good on his threat, emailing my friends and clients. Worse, he had hacked into my email account, so it looked like I'd sent it. I felt sick. With nothing visible in my sent items folder, there was no way of checking who in my contacts had received it, except by phoning them all. Terrified about the potential damage to my business, that's what I did.

Fortunately, many hadn't yet opened it and one client good-humouredly bemoaned not having made the email list. I laughed along, but I was mortified. And as a result, I lost two clients, plus a budding romantic relationship came to an abrupt end.

It took me months to recover, practically and emotionally. I changed my website domain, moved my emails to a secure provider and, after contacting the police, reported Antoni to Interpol's Computer Crimes Unit, which issued him a written warning via local Spanish police. I have never been hacked since.

Today I consider myself lucky that it happened years before social media's ubiquity. Over the years, my heart has always been in my mouth when I've read about others who have been through the same, or worse.

These days my partner is a loving (thankfully technophobic) man who views my revenge-porn experience with sympathy. I've put it behind me but my heart still skips a beat whenever I receive a strange email. And to this day I never wear orange.

*Name has been changed. Photograph posed by model