🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your average tech founder. After multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her intimate photographs, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and looked to technology for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year after launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her background in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

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

"I demand respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact 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 being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing 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 confident and powerful, giving my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she stated.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after a lot of late nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks and websites.

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service 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 legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a new system," 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 reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

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