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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard startup entrepreneur. After multiple occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I don't know," said Madelaine.

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

This marks quite a departure from her background in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report suggests that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "In my view 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 trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am 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 unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she added.

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many 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 websites.

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

This covert marker is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

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

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

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated abuse, because no one tool 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 photographs of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations 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 tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled 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.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that without consent and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she concluded.