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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in offering 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 criminal offence with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, explained victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live 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."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a 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 gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"People think it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many late nights, investigation and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform 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 invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

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 technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

Currently, one service has implemented her tech and she's in talks with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it is employed in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt 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 support somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

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 experienced 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, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she concluded.