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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your standard tech founder. After repeated occurrences of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to technology for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced 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 each year.

Madelaine, 37, explained victims lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's someone committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

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

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media and online sites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system is already in use in Hollywood, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise 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 expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a leading helpline said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image 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 crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important 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 just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.