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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical startup entrepreneur. After multiple occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to technology for a solution.

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

Just over a year after launching her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with perpetrators risking 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 UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she described.

"Some believe it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, 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 service has implemented her tech and she's in talks with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in the film industry, 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.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"When that guilt 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 reinforced so it's crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing 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 integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured 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, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an image to someone," said Jess.

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