🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your average tech founder. After multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to technology for a solution.

"These were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

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

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

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

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

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

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy 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 know the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed 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 online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media and websites.

When an image is viewed by a viewer, 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 withstand screenshots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system 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 different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a leading helpline said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"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 this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

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