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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your standard startup entrepreneur. After multiple occurrences of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to technology for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs 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, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with offenders risking two years in prison.

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

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed 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."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an accountant 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 technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after many late nights, research and "bugging people" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This covert marker is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you posted it on has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one service has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, 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 company that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

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

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims 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 invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.