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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your standard tech founder. After repeated instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"These were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

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

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to 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 indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, 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 where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years 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 treat to someone because I wish to," she said.

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

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

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

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

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is embedded into 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 shared non-consensually, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it already exists in sports broadcasting 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 company that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

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

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the support 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 create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because no one tool 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 photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

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