🔗 Share this article

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is not at all your typical tech founder. Following repeated occurrences of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks a significant shift from her background in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

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

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors lived with 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 dignity, 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 where I live or with people I love 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 being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she described.

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

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to know the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

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

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

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

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in talks with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

"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 novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a leading helpline said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing tech facilitated abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, 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 shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, 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 removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

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