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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your average startup entrepreneur. Following repeated instances of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"These were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents quite a departure from her background in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a saucy picture 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 up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, 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 professional 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 confident and powerful, giving 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 providing a service," she added.

She embraces 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 been through it to understand the flaws and the changes that were necessary," she stated.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

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

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service you posted it on has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

Currently, 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 sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a new system," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident 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 advocate from a support service said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling tech facilitated abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

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

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