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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical startup entrepreneur. After multiple occurrences of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to take action" and looked to technology for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," said Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study recently.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

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

Madelaine, 37, said survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a woman in control, 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 view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know 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 experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after a lot of late nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

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

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

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been shared non-consensually, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

To date, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in talks with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it is employed in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm 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 added.

She expressed hope she hoped 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 intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be reinforced 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 vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing 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 just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

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