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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she was "angry enough to take action" and turned to technology for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study recently.

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

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

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I demand dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see 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 an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she said.

"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 technology sector. "I understand 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 took someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was able 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 digital service where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social media and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a user, 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 survive screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, providing the service you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information 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.

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system already exists in the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating 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 believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional 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 a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth 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 passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," said Jess.

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