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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical startup entrepreneur. Following repeated instances of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

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 not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she added.

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 tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a different framework," said 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 reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled 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 only fifteen when images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

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

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that without consent and I think that should always be where the blame is," she affirmed.