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

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

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her background in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as image-based abuse, 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 study indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said victims lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you put 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 negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "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 strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand 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 took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she stated.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being altered and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"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 novel use and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a firm that has decades of expertise 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 preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "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 multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in her underwear were shared around her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

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