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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your average startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to technology for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks a significant shift from her background in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, 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 adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained victims endured feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared in my community or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always 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 described.

"Some believe it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

Currently, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in talks with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system is already in use in Hollywood, it already exists in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated gender-based 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 images of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims 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 concluded.