🔗 Share this article

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is far from your average startup entrepreneur. Following repeated occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to technology for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year after launching her venture, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

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

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to 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 sex industry. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said victims endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed 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 my mistake, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing 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, giving my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an financial advisor giving advice," she remarked.

She welcomes 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 tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand 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 many sleepless nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social media and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

Currently, one service has implemented her tech and she's in talks with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in Hollywood, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said 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 expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response 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 really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around 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 tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she concluded.