🔗 Share this article

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your average tech founder. After repeated occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

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

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

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

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years 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 treat to someone because I wish to," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the platform you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one platform 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 sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm 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 preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial 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, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"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 dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.