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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical tech founder. Following repeated occurrences of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to take action" and looked to technology for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," said Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, 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 my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she said.

"People think it's strange but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an financial advisor giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many sleepless nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker 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 re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been shared non-consensually, providing the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in the film industry, it already exists in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

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

Changing the Narrative

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

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "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.