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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical startup entrepreneur. Following multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," said Madelaine.

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

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is not at all 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 affected by intimate image abuse each year.

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 expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

"Some believe it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an financial advisor giving advice," she remarked.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "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 understand the loopholes and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after a lot of late nights, investigation and "bugging people" 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 accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been shared non-consensually, as long as the platform you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists 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," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering 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 deploy it widely," she added.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, saying: "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 only fifteen when photographs of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, too long for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she concluded.