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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your average startup entrepreneur. Following multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to technology for answers.

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

Little over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents a significant shift from her background in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I expect respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The fact that those images could be then shared 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."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, 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 unusual but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after a lot of sleepless 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 social connection apps, social media and online sites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is encoded within 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 find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service you posted it on has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it already exists in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a new system," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know 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.

Changing the Narrative

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

"If that self-blame is compounded 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 response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling 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 multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were shared around her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s 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'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.