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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your average startup entrepreneur. Following repeated occurrences of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she was "angry enough to take action" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

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

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

Madelaine, 37, explained victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact 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 my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always 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 gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"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 know that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, 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 many late nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

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

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged 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 altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

To date, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it already exists 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 decades of expertise in tech development so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated gender-based 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 only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her advocacy work.

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

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.