From Professional Dominatrix to Technology Entrepreneur: An Unconventional Fight To Combat Intimate Image Abuse

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is far from your standard tech founder. After repeated instances of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year after launching her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the realms 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 far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect consideration, 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 employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, 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 practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

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

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the changes 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 used by any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media 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 invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within 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.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in Hollywood, it already exists in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on 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 self blame can really be deepened so it's really important 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 bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, 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 first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

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

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the perpetrators. "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 invariably be where the responsibility is," she concluded.