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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical startup entrepreneur. Following multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and looked to technology for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year after launching her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

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

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to 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 around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, 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, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an financial advisor giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that an individual 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 maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many late nights, investigation and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance dating 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 specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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 Hollywood, it is employed in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"If that self-blame 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 deepened so it's really important that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "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 solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the blame is," she concluded.