The founder behind new dating app Safer Date on why it is removing the veil of anonymity to tackle the dangers of online dating – and how she plans to take on the industry following her own online dating experience.
Elaine Parker, founder of the Newcastle-based app, met a man through online dating app Plenty Of Fish in what at first seemed like a “sweep you off your feet scenario”.
“He was the opposite. He turned out to be a complete monster,” she told Prolific North.
During 2016, she endured months of domestic abuse, sexual assault and rape after meeting what she thought would be the man of her dreams online.
After she was eventually able to force him to leave her home, incidents of persistent harassment and stalking began to spiral out of control.
Forced to call the police after he attempted to break into her property one evening, multiple police officers arrived at her front door.
It was then that she discovered the man was well known to the police – he had a habit of trawling online dating websites to find his victims and had a long history of domestic abuse.
“I had a detective in the living room telling me and my son that we needed to go straight into a safe house because he was a very dangerous individual,” she said.
She was stunned to discover the man was already back online dating someone else while he had continued stalking her.
“I, like so many, assume that these dating sites have some sort of legal standard and that they must do some sort of checks to keep people like him off there. But that is just naivety because they don’t,” she added.
