🔗 Share this article

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard tech founder. After multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents quite a departure from her background in providing BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

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

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims endured shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

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

She welcomes being a unique figure 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 tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the changes 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 "consulting experts" who know about 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 viewed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive 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, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

To date, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in Hollywood, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology 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 would-be perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," stated Jess.

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