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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to technology for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify 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 offering BDSM services, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report suggests that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

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

"I demand respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she described.

"Some believe it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She embraces being a unique figure 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 tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she stated.

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

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

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service 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 not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution 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 images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced 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 shouldn't have happened'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," said Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that without consent and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.