🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your average tech founder. Following multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to technology for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has won several awards and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

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

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect dignity, 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 beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

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

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" 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 media and online sites.

When an image is accessed by a user, 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 ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

Currently, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in talks with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

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

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company 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 deterrent to potential perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a leading helpline said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution 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 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 shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

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