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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your standard tech founder. Following multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to technology for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents a significant shift from her background in offering 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 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 suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said victims endured feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she continued. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with people I love 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 someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and consistently 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 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 remarked.

She embraces being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many late nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

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

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

It means that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, as long as the service you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

To date, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in talks with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested 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 believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution 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 just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear 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 say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," said Jess.

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