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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," said Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks quite a departure from her background in providing BDSM services, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime 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 suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors endured shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "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 committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she added.

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

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many late nights, research and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been shared without your consent, providing the platform you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists 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," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

She said 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 commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's really important that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, 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 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, too long for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an image to someone," stated Jess.

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