From Professional Dominatrix to Technology Entrepreneur: A Unique Fight Against Revenge Porn

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical startup entrepreneur. After multiple instances of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This marks quite a departure from her background in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, 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 indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many late nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, as long as the service you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

To date, one service has implemented her tech and she's in talks with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know that this is solid 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 potential intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

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

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance 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 support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based 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 a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform 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 was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.