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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is not at all your average startup entrepreneur. Following repeated instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to take action" and turned to technology for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I don't know," stated 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 best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, 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 suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see 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 used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after a lot of late nights, research and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform 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 undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information 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

"The system already exists in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a support service commented she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse caused for victims.

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

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

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

"It took so long, too long for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

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