đź”— Share this article Transitioning from Dominatrix to Tech Founder: An Unconventional Campaign To Combat Revenge Porn Madelaine Thomas states her personal experience of experiencing her private photos leaked gives her a unique insight as a technology entrepreneur. Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your average startup entrepreneur. Following repeated instances of clients distributing her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for a solution. "These were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," explained Madelaine. Madelaine has won multiple accolades such as the Innovation in Tech Safety award at a prominent safety summit. Just over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently. This marks a significant shift from her previous career in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage. The Pervasive Problem The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with offenders facing up to two years in prison. It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by intimate image abuse on an annual basis. Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted. "I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," 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 a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone committing abuse." Madelaine hopes her tech will prevent would-be individuals from sharing photos without consent. An Unconventional Path Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she said. "People think it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor giving advice," she remarked. She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, 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 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 "consulting experts" who understand tech. How Does the Technology Work? Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites. When an image is accessed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them. This covert marker is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a different camera. It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow. Currently, one platform 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 already exists in sports broadcasting 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 partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added. She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers. Changing the Narrative An advocate from a support service said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims. "When that guilt is compounded by a misinformed friend or service 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 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 comprehensive strategy towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response." Both women have experienced experiencing their intimate images shared without their consent. TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later shape her women's rights campaigning. "It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess. She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess. "But it is a crime to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.