🔗 Share this article

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is far from your average startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," said Madelaine.

Little over a year after launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition 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 world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as revenge porn, 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 sex industry. A report suggests that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "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 expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, 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, primarily online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

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

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation 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 undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as 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 action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists 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 new system," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said 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 professional 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 not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It took so long, too long for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

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