🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your average startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

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

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

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

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said victims endured shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact that those images could be then shared 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 someone committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she described.

"Some believe it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an financial advisor giving advice," she added.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained 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.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people share images, 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 specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the platform you used has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service said she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's really important that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing 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 multi-layered response."

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 experienced in her youth that would later inform 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 dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the blame is," she affirmed.