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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is not at all your standard tech founder. After multiple occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to take action" and looked to technology for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with perpetrators 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 UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained 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 said.

"I expect respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "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 unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me 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.

"People think it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand 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 experienced it firsthand to understand the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she stated.

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

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been shared without your consent, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use 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 partnering with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we know that this is reliable 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 perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a support service said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt 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 noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, 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 local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s 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'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence 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.