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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is not at all your standard startup entrepreneur. Following multiple occurrences of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

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

This marks a significant shift from her background in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not my choice, 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, giving my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she added.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

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

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

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

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a leading helpline commented she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' 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 emphasized.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured 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'," recalled Jess.

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

"But it is a crime to distribute that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she concluded.