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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your typical startup entrepreneur. After multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her intimate photographs, she was "angry enough to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her background in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

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

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with 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 dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing 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 confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the changes 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 sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social networks and websites.

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

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

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 hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

To date, 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 the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a new system," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating 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 continued.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a support service said 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 uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, 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 circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, too long for someone to say to 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 offenders. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she concluded.