🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your standard startup entrepreneur. After multiple occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"These were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," said Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This marks quite a departure from her background in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse each year.

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

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community 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 someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she described.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social media 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 screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you posted it on has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within 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 discussions with many others.

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 new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution 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 a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, too long for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.