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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is not at all your typical tech founder. Following multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to technology for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has won several awards and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators 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 each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, 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 expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love 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 committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

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

She embraces being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, 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 needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after many 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 share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and websites.

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

This covert marker is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been shared without your consent, 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 data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in live television 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 partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know that this is reliable 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 preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the support somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

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