🔗 Share this article From BDSM Practitioner to Technology Entrepreneur: A Unique Fight To Combat Intimate Image Abuse Madelaine Thomas explains her personal experience of experiencing her private photos shared without consent offers her a distinct perspective as a technology entrepreneur. Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is not at all your average startup entrepreneur. Following multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her intimate photographs, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to tech solutions for answers. "Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I don't know," stated Madelaine. Madelaine has won multiple accolades including the Tech Safety Innovation award at a prominent industry conference. Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently. This represents a significant shift from her background in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage. A Widespread Issue The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders risking two years in prison. It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis. Madelaine, 37, explained survivors endured 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 trust, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser." Madelaine aims her tech will prevent would-be intimate image abusers non-consensually. An Unconventional Path Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she described. "People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked. She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand 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 loopholes 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 sleepless nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech. Understanding the Tech Solution Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and online sites. When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them. This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device. It ensures that if you discover your image has been shared without your consent, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken. To date, one service has implemented her tech and she's in talks with many others. An Established Method for a New Purpose "This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a new system," said Madelaine. "And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has 30 years experience 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 deterrent to would-be perpetrators. Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame An advocate from a support service commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims. "If that self-blame 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 deepened so it's crucial that the support somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated. She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled 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." Both women have been victims of experiencing their intimate images distributed non-consensually. 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 teens and 20s that would later shape her women's rights campaigning. "It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," said Jess. She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," said Jess. "But it is a crime to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she concluded.