🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of clients distributing her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to technology for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Just over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks a significant shift from her background in providing consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained victims lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, research and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social networks and websites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one service has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's really important that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.