🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to technology for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year after launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks quite a departure from her background in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the realms 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 not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse each year.

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

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional 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 empowered and strong, offering my body as a treat 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 remarked.

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

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

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks 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 digital file of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

Currently, one service has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," 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 caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important 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 really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later shape 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 passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an image to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to distribute that without consent and I think that should always be where the blame is," she concluded.