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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your typical startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced 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, 37, said victims lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "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 described.

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

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after a lot of late nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged 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 secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been shared 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 data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

Currently, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in Hollywood, it already exists in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a new system," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

She expressed hope she hoped 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.

"If that self-blame is reinforced 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 added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

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

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

"But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.