How dare JFS mums judge me

To everyone else, she was a normal Jewish housewife from the suburbs. Or so she thought.

Two weeks ago, her husband, who works in sales, received a call. The secret was out.

His friend told him that images of Katie were being shared by parents at their children's Jewish schools - JFS and Moriah Jewish Day School.

Suddenly, social-media messages appeared on the group-sharing site, WhatsApp, with images of Katie in compromising positions. One parent had taken the time to caption one photograph with the message: "A Moriah and JFS mum!!!!! On a soft porn site!!!"

The message hurt Katie - who was shocked by the attendant social-media bullying, more to be expected from schoolchildren than from parents. Unable to track down the culprits, Katie has now decided to tell her story and describe the impact that both her actions and those of other mothers who she describes as more judgmental, have had on her family.

"When I saw the picture with the headline, I was so shocked that someone would do something like that - that they could take the time to download my pictures and make a thing out of it. I could not believe that someone would want to do that," she says.

We agreed to meet at her home in Edgware. Katie, 39, is a little flustered, having just picked up the children from school, and she rings my mobile phone to let me know she is slightly delayed.

It is a sunny day, so I wait outside in the quiet, residential street, where children are riding their bikes, and families are walking their dogs. I wonder if the neighbours have an inkling of Katie's rather unconventional private life.

Eventually, she comes down the leafy road in her mini people's carrier. She swerves into her drive, turns off the engine, and out pour the children dressed in their JFS and Moriah school uniforms.

So far, so suburban housewife.

I follow Katie - who is dressed in heeled black trainers, jeans and a khaki jacket - into the kitchen. Mitsy, the family's 16-year-old cat, joins us. While most of the children head into the adjoining television room, the eldest daughter joins us in the kitchen, flopping into a nearby chair.

So far, so normal. Katie is comfortable talking about her new-found hobby in front of her children. As she puts it, "we have no secrets here; we have a laugh about it".

With that, she opens up.

She hoped her new hobby would be kept within her family. She says she doesn't know how people in the community found her pictures online, given that she used a fake name to post them on the Mad Cow Models website, a platform for amateur models and photographers.

Sitting at the kitchen table, she says: "The image has been sent to everyone. Since it was sent, around two weeks ago, it now seems like the whole of north-west London knows what I do.

"People won't talk to me in the playground when I go to pick up my kids. They look over at you, and you just know that they know.

"It is bullying. They look over at me and start whispering - but they won't say anything directly to me. They just look and stare.

"I have asked three people in the playground whether they knew where the images of me were coming from- who was sending them. They did not tell me.

"I don't understand why people would bother doing that because I certainly don't mouth off about other people.

"I don't have many friends or get involved with lunches or committees or anything like that. I keep myself to myself," she says, adding: "When my kids come home and say: 'this person is bitching about me', I say to them: 'Look what people are doing to me. I don't know who they are or why they have done it and I'm older than you.' I try to explain to them that it is just part of life. Last week, my husband went to go and pick up the children. One of the mothers went up to him and said: 'What do you think of what your wife is doing?' He told her he was fully supportive of me and that he has known about it since the beginning. She was a bit shocked. She just gave him a disapproving look.

"I think the community is being judgmental. They're shocked because taking naked pictures does not appear to be something that Jewish ladies do."

I suggest that it is not a traditional hobby for a Jewish housewife living in north-west London. "No, it's not," she laughs. "But then, I have never been the kind of run-of-the-mill Jewish lady".

While she says it would make her angry if parents stopped letting their children play with her kids, Katie says she won't stop modelling.

"What I do has nothing to do with my children. It is what I do when they're not around.

"What I do isn't tacky. It's art. It's an erotic art, a nude kind of thing. That's what I want to be known for. I want to build a name for myself. I like it, so why shouldn't I carry on doing it? I'm not hurting anyone.

"I thought about doing nothing - but that would give them satisfaction," she adds, explaining why she wanted to tell her side of the story. "The images of me are still circulating around the community. The other day, I saw that some of my photos have 1,000 clicks.

"After the pictures went around, I decided to set up a Twitter and Facebook account on the internet. People in the community have already seen all my pictures, so what difference does it make?"

"The subsequent uproar hasn't made me want to quit. It's made me want to do it more!"

While Katie might not be fussed, I wonder whether her family is. Her eldest daughter says no one has mentioned the pictures at school, while Katie says all her husband's friends have now seen the pictures of her.

She says: "There's nothing I can do about it. Friends and family have all been a bit shocked but they know I'm a grown woman and it is my choice. But I am yet to go out to a restaurant on a Saturday night and see if it goes quiet."

Once a "shy" woman, modelling on the website has given Katie - who cut her hair short after being diagnosed with lupus because it made it brittle - a new sense of confidence. And after her father passed away from cancer two years ago, she says she decided to embrace life to the full.

"You think, what a waste, he could have lived and been with his grandchildren and seen so much more. His life was ended cruelly.

"I just think to myself, life can be just be taken away. Now I think, if I want to go and do something, you've just got to go and do it. I want to give it a real go before I get too old."

Born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, Katie left the local St Hilda's School without pursuing higher education. She worked at her late father's video equipment business before marrying her husband at Edgware Reform Synagogue in 2000. To pass the time, she would "do bits and pieces around the kids" - unexciting administrative roles from accounts to sales.

Then, in September, she came across an online advert for life models, people who pose naked for artists. She decided to give it a go.

"When I was young, I always wanted to be a model," she says. "I had some photographs taken once when I was around 14, but I was quite shy and didn't really have much confidence in myself. I didn't do much with it. My father always told me, if you don't have much, use what you got. So I use myself and my body to try and create something. These days you need qualifications and things like that, so if you don't have that you have to be a bit more creative about how you do things."

But life modelling was not for her. "I didn't like it at all," she says, noting that the employer who booked her felt the same. "I got a text message when I went home saying: 'Don't bother coming back. You don't look fit and you're useless'.

"I was quite upset. So I thought I would try photographic modelling instead, because you're not sat in one place for hours."

That is how, last October, Katie found the amateur website.

"I don't do it for money - it's for myself, for my independence," she says. "As a mother, all you do is you look after the kids all the time. But you never really have any achievements for yourself. I have always tried bits and pieces but I've never really got anywhere. This is the first time that I've really got anywhere. I have built a name up for myself on the site and a lot of the photographers know me and respect what I do."

So I wonder how her husband felt when she told him what she wanted to do.

"He didn't like it. He was very anti it at the beginning. But I said I wanted to try it so he let me.

"Since then, I have shown him all the pictures and been open with him" she adds. "Within one day of being on the website, I was inundated with messages. I got so many photo-shoots from it."

In fact, though she now sits beside me clad modestly in pearls, she reveals that, earlier in the day, she took part in "an erotic [photo-shoot] - more on the solo line".

Shoots, Katie says, are varied. For the one that day, she was sprawled out on her living room couch. But weeks earlier, she'd been pictured nude in her local Edgware park when "there was nobody coming," she laughs.

"I am still shy but I know that, if you want to get a good picture, you have to make sure you get dramatic passion in it. I have seen pics where I have held back and it doesn't look good."

So why the pseudonym ''Barbados Dream''? The answer is simple. "Because Barbados has been my favourite place in the world ever since I was a little girl. It would be my dream to live there," she laughs.

With that, I leave her to prepare the children's supper. Beyond that, I presume she has to get an early night. She's off to Barbados for real in the morning. This week, I checked her profile - and, true to form, she has been uploading some intimate snaps - from the beach.