🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your average startup entrepreneur. Following repeated occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

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

Just over a year since founding her company, 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 recently.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

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

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

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 empowered and strong, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she described.

"People think it's strange but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an financial advisor providing a service," she added.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after a lot of late nights, investigation and "bugging people" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been shared non-consensually, as long as the service you used has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, 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 test it at scale," she continued.

She expressed hope she hoped 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 commented she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional 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 committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations 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 say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an image to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.