🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your typical tech founder. After repeated instances of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to technology for a solution.

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

Little over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

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

A Widespread Issue

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

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims lived with 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 respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community 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 an individual committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a 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 confident and powerful, giving 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 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 bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after a lot of late 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 media and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling tech facilitated gender-based 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 only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It took so long, too long for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

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