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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard startup entrepreneur. Following repeated instances of clients distributing her intimate photographs, 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 pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," said Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks a significant shift from her background in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, explained victims endured feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love 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 being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

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

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of late 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 websites.

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

This covert marker is encoded within 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 find out your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

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

"When that guilt is reinforced 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 crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach 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 multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, 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 survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo 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 affirmed.