From Professional Dominatrix to Tech Founder: A Unique Fight To Combat Intimate Image Abuse

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical startup entrepreneur. Following repeated occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained victims 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 anticipate?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared in my community or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

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

She welcomes being something of an anomaly 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 founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she stated.

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

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is accessed 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 screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you used has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

Currently, one platform has implemented 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 live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," 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 reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

She said 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 first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt 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 crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs 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 took so long, 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 consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

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