From BDSM Practitioner to Tech Founder: A Unique Fight Against Revenge Porn

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your standard tech founder. Following multiple instances of individuals distributing her intimate photographs, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to technology for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in offering 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 far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that around 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 say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand 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 used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, 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, mainly online, for 10 years and always 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 of my own volition," she described.

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

She embraces being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of late nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the service you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"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 novel use and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She expressed hope she believed 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 directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

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

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled 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 photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured 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 tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

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

"However, it is illegal to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she concluded.