🔗 Share this article

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical startup entrepreneur. Following repeated occurrences of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents quite a departure from her background in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared 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 my mistake, that's an individual committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

She embraces being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and online sites.

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 withstand screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been shared non-consensually, providing the platform you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

To date, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in talks with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

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

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

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

Changing the Narrative

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

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's really important that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, too long for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that without consent and I think that should always be where the blame is," she concluded.