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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your standard tech founder. After repeated occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks quite a departure from her background 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 criminal offence with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said victims lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "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 an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"People think it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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 user, it is automatically embedded 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 edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been shared non-consensually, as long as the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist 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

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

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident 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 would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled 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 just 15 when images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later shape her advocacy work.

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

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.