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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your typical startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of clients distributing her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and looked to technology 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 have never met," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year after launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

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

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

"People think it's unusual but I don't see it any differently 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 unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," 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 know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

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

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

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

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

To date, one service has adopted her tech and she's in talks with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in tech development so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with 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 technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It required years, 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 intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she concluded.