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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your average startup entrepreneur. After multiple instances of individuals distributing her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" 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 used against me by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as exemplary procedure 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 BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

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

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and websites.

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

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been shared non-consensually, providing the platform you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in the film industry, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in tech development so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' 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 using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress 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, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," 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 circulate that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the blame is," she affirmed.