đź”— Share this article From Professional Dominatrix to Tech Founder: A Unique Fight To Combat Intimate Image Abuse Madelaine Thomas explains her personal experience of having her private photos shared without consent gives her a unique insight as a tech founder. BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical startup entrepreneur. Following repeated instances of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for answers. "Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," explained Madelaine. Madelaine has received multiple accolades including the Innovation in Tech Safety award at a prominent industry conference. Little over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an independent pornography review earlier this year. This represents a significant shift from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the world of BDSM. The Pervasive Problem Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders facing up to two years in prison. It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse each year. Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said. "I expect dignity, 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 subsequently distributed 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." Madelaine hopes her tech will prevent would-be individuals from sharing photos non-consensually. A Unique Journey Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she said. "Some believe it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked. She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy 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 understand the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained. She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after a lot of late nights, research and "consulting experts" who understand tech. Understanding the Tech Solution Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social media and websites. When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them. This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device. It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the platform 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 platform has adopted 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 sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a new system," said Madelaine. "We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued. She said she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be intimate image abusers. Changing the Narrative An expert from a support service commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims. "If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional 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 response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated. She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort." Madelaine Thomas and TV presenter Jess Davies have been victims of experiencing their private photos distributed without their consent. TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents 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 tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess. She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an image to someone," said Jess. "But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she concluded.