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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of clients distributing her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to take action" and looked to technology for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

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

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence 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 around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand 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 been through it to know the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many late nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social media and online sites.

When an image is viewed 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 copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist 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

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, 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.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with 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, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing 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 integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, 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 eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an image to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she concluded.