🔗 Share this article

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard tech founder. After multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to technology for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a 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, giving my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she described.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it took someone who has been through it to know the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she stated.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many late nights, investigation and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you used has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a support service commented she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response a victim receives 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 really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," said 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 image to someone," said Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that without consent and I think that should always be where the blame is," she concluded.