🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your standard tech founder. Following repeated occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year after launching her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study recently.

This represents a significant shift from her background in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims endured feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared in my community or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, 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 professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, 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 understand the loopholes and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after a lot of late nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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 undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, as long as the platform you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

To date, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a new system," said 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 deploy it widely," she continued.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's really important that the support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated abuse, because no one tool 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 only fifteen when photographs of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

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