🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking 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 women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors 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 respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality 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 my mistake, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she said.

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

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many late nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is encoded within the copy 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 used has the system integrated, 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 service has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a new system," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience 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 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 directly the trauma and guilt this abuse caused for 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 crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images 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 shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to 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.

"But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she concluded.