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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your typical tech founder. After multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice 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.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, 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 sex industry. A study 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 feelings of humiliation. "I think 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 consideration, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact 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 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 empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she said.

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

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to know the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social networks and websites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing 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 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

"The system 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," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering 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 test it at scale," she added.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, too long for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

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