🔗 Share this article

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your typical tech founder. After multiple occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to technology for a solution.

"These were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year after launching her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

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

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

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

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, 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 my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted 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 used by any digital service where people share images, for instance social connection 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 invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you used 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.

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

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 different framework," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's really important that the response somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "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 solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an image to someone," said Jess.

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